How can I remind students about tasks they must complete?

Students often ask to be notified of events in their course sites, such as upcoming assignment or assessment due dates and whether items have been graded.

Many UVACollab tools include options to notify site participants of various activities and help them keep track of their completed or graded work. This article lists tools that include these options, with links to articles explaining how to use them.

Automatically display scheduled messages and important dates.

Announcements

Announcements editing screen displays options to specify availability dates and email notification options.

When you create or edit an announcement, you can specify the dates when it will be available. You can schedule an announcement to be posted at a specific date and time by setting a Beginning date.

You may also enable email notification for your announcements, which sends the text of the announcement to site participants via email. If the announcement also has a Beginning date set, the email notification will be sent at the specified date and time.

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Calendar

Calendar displays a date in pink that has been selected to show it is an assignment due date.

Add the Calendar to your site to display important events from other tools, such as assignment and assessment due dates.  You may publish your calendar to let students import events from it into other calendars they may use, such as Google Calendar.

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Help students keep track of upcoming and completed work.

Assignments

Assignment editing screen displays add due date to calendar and add announcement about open date options.

Assignments works together with the Calendar and Announcements tools, if you have them in your site. When you create or edit an assignment, you may automatically add the due date for the assignment to the Calendar. You can also choose to add an announcement about the open date to Announcements.

You can also enable an option to notify students via email when you release grades for the assignment.

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Lessons

Example Week 1 Checklist on a page in Lessons displays several activities, with one checked off as completed.

Use Lessons to structure your course activities to make it easier for students to access the content they need and to engage with learning materials.

Add a checklist for each week, unit, or topic to help students keep track of the activities they completed and manage their time. Use checklists to break down complex assignments into discrete tasks that students can check off progressively. This will help students who may feel overwhelmed by the amount of work they have to do. You will also be able to review the items that your students checked off.

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Tip: This blog post from the Center for Teaching Excellence (opens new window) includes more information about using Lessons to encourage student engagement.

Tests & Quizzes

Publish Assessment screen shows email notification and due date Calendar display options.

When you publish a test or quiz, you may send an automatic email notification to students to let them know when the assessment will be available. The email notification includes a direct link to the assessment and information such as the due date and time limit, if a due date and time limit were enabled in the assessment's settings. Before publishing, you can add text to the notification email to customize it.

By default, if the Calendar tool is included in your site, the assessment's due date will be displayed on the calendar.

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Note: The email notification is sent immediately when publishing the assessment, but students will not be able to access the assessment via the link in the email until the assessment's available date.

Notify students when new materials are added to your site.

Drop Box

File Drop Options tab showing options to enable notifications.

In Drop Box, you can use the Options tab to enable email notifications when files are uploaded. Allowing email notifications will give you the option to send notifications to students when you upload files to their folders. It will also give students the option to notify you when they upload files. You can choose to always send email notifications to ensure that email notifications are sent for each upload.

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Resources

Resources Upload Files page showing Email Notification options.

When you upload files in Resources, you may send an automatic email notification to site participants to let them know that new content is available.

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Syllabus

When you add or edit a syllabus item, you may send an automatic email notification to site participants to let them know that the new syllabus is available.

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Send email notifications for messages and meetings.

Messages

Compose a Message page displays a message being written with the Send Cc option selected.

While composing a message, you may select an option to send a copy of it to recipients' email address(es).

If you would like all messages to be sent to recipients via email, you may use the Settings tab in Messages to enable that option.

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Sign Up

When you create a new meeting in Sign Up, you have the option to send an email notifying all potential participants that they can sign up for it.

By default, attendees signed up for the meeting will receive an email reminder a day before the meeting. If the Calendar tool is included in your site, the meeting will also be published to the calendar.

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