D2L Email, Outlook, and Regular Effective Contact

Email is one of the tools that instructors can use to conduct regular effective contact with students in their online classes, but it can be harder to document the use of that tool for that purpose as emails sent from inside D2L are not easily tracked. A rule in Outlook as well as the consistent use of keywords in emails sent from inside D2L can make this tracking easier.

The following steps are demonstrated in the video (note that these are substantially the same whether the desktop client for Outlook or Outlook Web Access is being used):

1. Sending an email to all students from the Classlist page with a subject line that includes the class name and term. The example is "HCD320 (spring 2015): Activities this week."
2. Creating a rule in Outlook web access based on the some of the keywords in the subject line of the email. The example is "HCD320 (spring 2015):" The rule will move messages matching that criterion into a designated folder.
3. Sending a second email to all students from the Classlist page with a different subject line but one that includes keywords that match the rule. The example is "HCD320 (spring 2015): Course ending soon."
4. Showing that the second email sent was moved into the designated folder.

At any time the use of email to conduct regular effective contact can be documented by looking at the folder.