Course Messages

Course messages are private text-based communications that occurs within your course among course members. Although similar to email in format, faculty and students must be logged into Blackboard and enrolled in a course to read and send course messages in that course.

Course messages are useful when communications between faculty and students are part of the academic experience and/or possibly graded as participation - such as check-ins with an adviser.

Course messages are not enabled by default in most courses. To have course messages enabled in your course and made available for students, send an email to onlineedsupport@usa.edu.

Once Course Messages have been enabled, access them by navigating to the Course Messages menu item.

Create a Message

On the Course Messages page, select the “Create Message” button to create a new message.

Course Messages are very similar to email but can only be sent to faculty or students enrolled in the course. Add recipients for your message in the “To”, “Cc” and “Bcc” fields. Then add a subject line and compose your message in the text box editor. Select “Submit” to send your message.

Note that you have access to all the normal Blackboard tools in the text box editor, including the Mashups. This enables you to send video messages in addition to text.