NOT BASEBALL

Phew. I had too many things due today. I’m not sure what I will do once Monday stops being a holiday next week. At any rate it is early in the semester and I wanted to email students who missed assignments to let them know what class expectations are and to give them a chance to ask questions in case they are having trouble finding assignments or deadlines.

I remembered that a colleague had mentioned that you could take your mass emails and using codes insert the students name. I went to the Quickmail block in HFCOnline and selected compose message.

Once you have the message open select the users you want to receive the message.

In the message body type [:firstname:] to get the student’s first name to show up in their copy of the message. Type [:lastname:] to get the student’s last name. There are a list of codes you can use for other things below the message. Most do not seem too useful.

Here is what I got when I sent the message above to me:

It seemed to work really well. Several students have already checked in to ask for extensions or to ask for directions. It may have worked without personalization but I do not recall it working so well in the past. I guess it is easier to ignore the form letters without a name as just something going to everyone.