Sakai forum postings and email notifications
Gregory Guthrie
Is (or could) it be possible to have an option whereby forum postings for those with email notifications send out an alert and title, and a link to the message, but not include the body of the postings?
That would make it possible to track and measure actual forum message reading by students. With email notifications currently also including content, actually going online is not needed, so we have no stats on if students are actually reading them, or following the course – logins are not needed!
Or perhaps, some embedded tracking cookie or image to monitor opening such forum posting emails?
David Eveland
I would add to Greg’s comment that removing the content of the forum removes the likely hood that participants attempt to reply to the notification email to engage in the discussion forum. I don’t know how many times I’ve told folks, - it’s just a notification it’s not the actual content – the discussion is online not in ‘notification space’. (just my 2 cents) +1 for Greg’s idea.
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Dave E.
865-251-2320
<end of reply or forward>
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Kyle Malmberg
+1
Laura Gekeler
LMS Administrator
+1
From: sakai...@apereo.org [mailto:sakai...@apereo.org] On Behalf Of David Eveland
Sent: Wednesday, December 13, 2017 9:40 AM
To: Gregory Guthrie <gut...@mum.edu>; saka...@apereo.org; sakai...@apereo.org
Subject: Re: [sakai-user] Sakai forum postings and email notifications
I would add to Greg’s comment that removing the content of the forum removes the likely hood that participants attempt to reply to the notification email to engage in the discussion forum. I don’t know how many times I’ve told folks, - it’s just a notification it’s not the actual content – the discussion is online not in ‘notification space’. (just my 2 cents) +1 for Greg’s idea.
------------
Dave E.
865-251-2320
<end of reply or forward>From: <sakai...@apereo.org> on behalf of Gregory Guthrie <gut...@mum.edu>
Date: Wednesday, December 13, 2017 at 9:13 AM
To: "saka...@apereo.org" <saka...@apereo.org>, "sakai...@apereo.org" <sakai...@apereo.org>
Subject: [sakai-user] Sakai forum postings and email notifications
That would make it possible to track and measure actual forum message reading by students. With email notifications currently also including content, actually going online is not needed, so we have no stats on if students are actually reading them, or following the course – logins are not needed!
Or perhaps, some embedded tracking cookie or image to monitor opening such forum posting emails?
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Gregory Guthrie
I would like to add – IMHO for faculty/Instructors, getting full content by email is convenient, and they don’t make such “reply-to” mistakes, and we don’t have an issue tracking their participation in reading forums. This would only be for students.
From: sakai...@apereo.org [mailto:sakai...@apereo.org] On Behalf Of Laura Gekeler
Subject: Re: [sakai-user] Sakai forum postings and email notifications
+1 LauraG
.
Tiffany Stull
Hi all,
One of the major Forums-related wants I've heard from users is options for granularity in notifications. For example, an instructor creates a topic specific for students to ask questions in the course. He wants notifications from that topic only, not from all the other forums/topics, where students post reactions to weekly readings and respond to each other.
I think the content of the email notifications could be taken into consideration as part of the desire for granularity. However, in this case, it would be best if the individual user (regardless of role) could choose whether or not to have the content of the posts included in the email.
Before voting for removing message content from the emails, I
urge you to consider WHY users might want message content in the
email. It is likely helpful for accessibility to users of
assistive technology. If you use a screen reader and keyboard
navigation only, I imagine it is much easier to access messages
individually, as plain text, in email, than to try to sift through
all the messages on a page to get to the ones you want to read!
Maybe ISU's accessibility team could weigh in on this? (As a
related plug, if you have a chance today at 4
pm EST (convert to your time by clicking), please drop in on
the Accessibility Working Group meeting where we'll be discussing
Forums issues!)
If the instructor really wants to stop students from getting
content in the email notifications, could a permissions table be
added to sites that includes email notification options, where the
instructor can choose which types of notifications roles or groups
can get? For example Email with message content vs. Email
without message content? At an institutional level, this
table could be set to default to without message content
if you want to make it a notification only.
All this being said, I don't think having students access
conversations via the Forums tool actually helps with
knowing if they read something. Either the instructor needs to
set the topic to automatically mark content as read (in which case
all posts are marked as soon as the student accesses the page) OR
the student needs to manually select the Mark as Read
icon, click each individual post, or reply to each post. I just
spoke with an instructor yesterday who commented on how the count
of posts read is completely useless for this reason.
Unfortunately, the only way to tell if students read something is
to receive some meaningful response or synthesis of information
from them.
Tiffany
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