Email to students from a past semester

[MarkLuther]

How can I send Email to students from a past semester?  We were unable to schedule a field trip last semester and I want to invite those students to join my class field trip for this semester.

[chriscas]

Hi @MarkLuther,

This is going to vary based o the setting choices your school/institution has chosen for Canvas...

• You may be able to go into the old course and post an announcement.
• You may be able to use the Canvas inbox to send a message to all students of that previous course
• You may be able to use your school's student information system (not Canvas) to send emails to the students.
• You may be able to use Canvas to get student emails and compose an email manually putting those addresses in a BCC field (for privacy reasons).

You might want to ask someone at your school/institution (probably either in an IT or Communications area) how they'd prefer you handle this.  Some institutions may have policies and procedures in place while some may leave things completely up to you.

Hope this helps a bit!

-Chris

[SusanNiemeyer]

I teach at a community college. Once my college has closed my courses at the end of the semester, I am no longer able to contact my past students through the Inbox. I found this out this winter when I wanted to contact some of my fall students.

I ended up notifying these students through SIS, which will still send out emails to their college email accounts.

[AnjalyMore]

SIS? WHAT IS THAT? AND HOW IT WORKS?

[chriscas]

Hi @AnjalyMore,

SIS is an acronym for Student Information System.  In most education areas, the student information system is considered to be the source of truth for student, teacher, enrollment, course, grade, and other information.  Many of these systems have functionality for teachers to send messages to students of courses they teach, but there are some systems which may not allow this.  Some examples of student information systems are PowerSchool, PeopleSoft, and Banner, though there are many many more out there.  You'd want to ask someone in the IT area of your school/institution about what SIS is in-use and whether it has any messaging/email abilities or not.

Hope this helps!

-Chris