1 What Group Messages are
With group messages you send announcements to course participants. Unlike the one-to-one messages in the Message center, a group message goes to the whole course (or to selected courses) at once. Group messages are in the Message center: open “Message center” in the top bar and choose the “Group Messages” tab (Announcements to courses). The app remembers which tab you opened last.
2 View and actions
The view shows the group messages you have sent. At the top there are buttons for creating a new message and cleaning up expired ones; the tabs show active messages and the archive.
- New Message – create and send a group message (section 3).
- Run Cleanup – archives expired messages.
- Group Messages / Archive – active and archived messages separately.
- Edit / Delete – edit or delete a sent message.
3 Sending a message
“New Message” opens a form. Enter a subject and the message, and choose the recipients and settings.
- Subject and Message – the title and content of the announcement (text editor).
- 🔗 Add link – this button in the editor toolbar adds a link to the message, for example to a YouTube video. Enter the Address (URL) and, if you like, the Link text (optional); if you have selected text in the editor, it becomes the link text. The link opens in a new window for the student.
- To – All courses, or choose specific courses.
- ⚠️ Important – highlights the message to students as important.
- 📌 Pinned – moves the message to the top of the list.
- Expires in (days) – how many days the message stays active (default 15). When it expires, the message disappears from the active list; it only moves to the archive when you run “Run Cleanup” (not automatically).
- Send Message – sends the announcement to the selected participants.
4 Read receipts
For each group message you can see who has acknowledged reading it (“Read by”). This lets you follow whether students have seen an important announcement.
- Read by – a list of students who have acknowledged the message. If nobody has read it yet, it says “No one has read this message yet.”
- A student's acknowledgement (section 5) is recorded here immediately.
5 What the student sees + acknowledging
When a student opens the course, an unread group message opens for them in a window. The student acknowledges reading the message, and the acknowledgement appears to the teacher in the read receipts. If they close the window without acknowledging (Close), the message stays unread and opens again the next time they open the course.
- The message opens automatically when the student opens the course and the message is unread.
- Labels – 📌 Pinned and ⚠️ Important message appear in the title; the sender and date below.
- Acknowledgement – the student has to tick “I have read this message”, which activates the “Confirm” button. Pressing it marks the message as read and sends the acknowledgement to the teacher.
- A message that has already been read can be opened again, and then only the Close button is shown.