There are three options to send an email to your class -- Canvas Announcements, Canvas Inbox / Conversations, and the CUIT MailTool.
Canvas Announcements
You can create an
announcement to share important information with all users within your course and with users in sections of a course. In your
notification preferences, you can choose to receive notifications for announcements created by you as well as replies to announcements you've created. Please Note:
Students may also manage notification settings for announcements. You may want to add a sentence in your syllabus alerting your students to keep daily summary notification settings on for announcements.
519 - Announcements Overview from Canvas LMS on Vimeo.
Canvas Inbox / Conversations
In Conversations, you can send a message to one user or multiple users in a course.
Learn more.
If your recipient list contains more than 100 users, your message will automatically be sent as individual messages to each user. As the sender, you will also be included in the total recipient count.
Notes:
Currently you cannot message users in multiple courses.
You can also send a message to yourself, but messages can only be viewed in the Sent messages folder.
Once a course has concluded, you can no longer message students in that course.
If your recipient list contains more than 100 users, your message will automatically be sent as individual messages to each user. As the sender, you will also be included in the total recipient count.
Notes:
Currently you cannot message users in multiple courses.
You can also send a message to yourself, but messages can only be viewed in the Sent messages folder.
Once a course has concluded, you can no longer message students in that course.
In your
notification preferences, you can choose to receive notifications for conversations. Please Note:
Students may also manage notification settings for conversations. You may want to add a sentence in your syllabus alerting your students to keep daily summary notification settings on for conversations.
CUIT Mail Tool
The Mailtool is a Columbia created tool for Canvas-Courseworks that preserves all of the popular features that were available in the older Sakai-based Courseworks Mailtool. Individuals with the roles of Teacher or TA will have access to use this tool. Teachers may enable student access to the Mailtool on a course by course basis. Teachers may also enable/disable TA access.
With the Mailtool, you can send an email directly to a student’s email account, and bypass Canvas notifications. You’re able to send to specific course roles, groups, and sections. Mailtool also allows you to send yourself a copy and add an outside email address to the recipient list.