The Mailtool is a Columbia created tool for CourseWorks which allows instructors to send emails directly to students.
Announcements appear inside of CourseWorks. Students will see announcements when they log into CourseWorks. Students may also choose to receive notifications of announcements in their email.
Chat is a tool that allows students and instructors to communicate in real time, using a text window inside the course.
How do I send a message to my students?
There are three (3) ways to send a message to your class:
Mailtool
Only individuals with the roles of Teacher or TA have access to the mailtool by default. 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.
To enable student access to the "Mailtool" in CourseWorks, navigate to your course settings, find the "Mailtool" option, and ensure it is checked to allow students to send and receive emails within the CourseWorks platform. This gives students the ability to communicate directly with the instructor and other classmates through the course site.
Learn more about the Mailtool here.
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.
Chat
Chat is a tool that allows students and instructors to communicate in real time. It's available in all CourseWorks courses and groups.
Here are some of the features of the Chat function:
- Public conversations: All chat messages are public and saved for the entire course
- Time stamps: All messages have a time and date stamp
- Chat history: Chat history is accessible indefinitely
- Notifications: Users can receive audio alerts for new messages
- Online user list: Users can see who is currently online
If you would like to use this function, make sure you enable “Chat” in the course Navigation menu. Once enabled, you will be able to select “Chat” from the left-hand menu. To chat, you must type a message into the text bar at the bottom of the page. You can add emojis by selecting the emoji icon. Once finished, click “Send” to send the message.
Please note that any user in the course can participate in a chat and only the course instructor can delete messages.
For further information, here is the general link to the Canvas Instructor Guide.
Last updated: 08/29/2025