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.

Email Students Who Have Not Yet Taken a Quiz

Desire2Learn does not have an easy way to grade all of the students who have not yet taken a quiz via the Quizzes tool, but this can be done from Grades.

Email Instructor

Using this code, you can create a link that your students can click on to "Email instructor." This is HTML that requires some editing before you can use it:

 <a target="_blank" href="/d2l/lms/email/frame_compose.d2l?ou={OrgUnitID}&to=INSERTEMAILHERE&cc=&bcc=" onclick="popup = window.open('/d2l/lms/email/frame_compose.d2l?ou={OrgUnitID}&to=INSERTEMAILHERE&cc=&bcc=', 'PopupPage', 'height=450,width=500,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes'); return false">Email your Instructor via Course Email</a>

Take the code INSERTEMAILHERE (two locations) and replace each with your complete Los Rios email address. Once you have edited this code, you can insert it anywhere in your course offering. You must use the HTML editor to use it, so you will need to click the Edit HTML Source button in the lower-left corner of a text box. Here are the steps to create a news item with this code:

• Copy the code above.
• Create a new news item and type in a Headline (e.g., "Email Your Professor").
• Click the Edit HTML Source button to open the HTML Source Editor window.
• Paste the code and then replace the string INSERTEMAILHERE with your complete Los Rios email address (two locations).
• Click the Update button (this cloes the HTML Source Editor window).
• Feel free to change the link caption if you wish and then click the Save button.

Emailing All Students

To send an email to all students enrolled in a class, go to the Classlist and click the button labeled "Email everyone on this tab."

A new browser window will open with an email message addressed to all users on the tab. You may decide to move the addresses from the To: field to the Bcc: field. Fill in a subject, type a message, and click the Send button. A copy of the message will be sent to the person initiating the call.

How Students can set up iMail forwarding

The email address for all student users is their iMail address, which is their username @ imail.losrios.edu. Students who prefer to use another address can set up their iMail account to forward automatically to any email address. Here are the steps to give to your students:

1. Log in to iMail Note: iMail must first be "activated," but all that is needed is a student ID number and a birth date.
2. Click on the Preferences link on the left side of the page
3. The first choice on the preferences page is Forwarding your iMail
4. Pick a forwarding option, enter an email address and then click the button to Update Forwarding Preference

Character limit for various text fields

The various identifying fields inside Desire2Learn have limits on the number of characters (including spaces) allowed:

Tool	Item	Field	Limit
News	Item	Headline	400
Content	Module and Topic	Title	150
Discussions	Forum and Topic	Title	250
Discussions	Message	Subject	150
Dropbox	Folder	Name	128
Quizzes	Quiz [Properties and Submission Views and Reports]	Name	256
Quizzes	Quiz [Restrictions]	Password	20
Quizzes	Question Library  [Sections and Random Sections]	Name	256
Quizzes	Question Library [Questions and Information]	Title	256
Quizzes	Question Library [Question Images]	Description	1791
Grades	Grade Item and Category	Name	127
Email	Compose New Message	Subject	256
Attendance	Register and Session	Name	128
Attendance	Session	Description	128
Calendar	Event	Title	128
Chat	Chat	Title	150
Chat	Chat	Message	400
Checklist	Checklist and Item	Name	128
Groups	Category and Group	Name	128
Groups	Group	Code	50

Email formatting bug shows HTML codes

An email sent from inside Desire2Learn includes the HTML formatting codes, which makes it difficult to read. Our technical staff is working on this bug. For a workaround you can use the email system built on the Contact Students tab in the OGS system (inside.losrios.edu). That text box does not have this bug and the email addreses and roster are exactly the same as in D2L.

Get an email when a student submits a quiz

You can set up your quizzes to get an email when your students submit a quiz.

1. On the Properties tab for a quiz, expand the Optional Advanced Properties section of the page.
2. Enter a notification email. You can use any email address, but it must be a complete email address:

The email that the system sends tells you which course, quiz, and student.

Email issues

Sending email works best when it is used from the classlist, as the email tool has options that might be confusing. From the email tool, the address book has people from across the district who have no connection to the user (i.e., they are not classmates or instructors for that student). From the classlist, a user can select an individual or group of individuals to send an email to.

Email addresses

Each user account has an email address associated when created, which for students is the iMail address and for instructors is the Los Rios email address. Instructor users can change their email addresses. Student users cannot change their email addresses. They can set up their iMail forwarding preferences to have messages sent to that address forwarded to any other email address. There is a second place to indicate an email address that all users can access. This is the Reply To address. To change this, select the Preferences link in the My Settings widget on the My Home page and then click on the Email tab. The Reply To address does not replace the email address associated with a user's account. If a user types something in this field, that address becomes the "From" address for all messages sent by that user from inside Desire2Learn. An instructor can always email from the Classlist to the students' iMail addresses.