Faculty and course support may need to make announcements or remind students of details related to class events or assignments. VSTAR Learn provides a convenient place to do this. Each course comes with a News Forum, and all students enrolled in that course are automatically subscribed. Students are set up to receive an email message each time one of these messages comes through, and VSTAR Learn retains a record of all messages sent out.

Only Faculty and Course Support can send messages through this forum. The message will come from the email address, as set in the individual VSTAR Learn profile, of the person sending the message. Students replying back to the message will reply directly to the faculty or staff member who posted the message.

To post a message, navigate to your course in VSTAR Learn. The news forum is located in the general resources area. This should be right under the course name or course summary. You will have to click the “+” sign next to General Resources to expand this topic and access the forum itself.

Once you’ve expanded the Global Resources area, click on “News Forum.”

Once emails are sent to students using this method, they will be stored here.  If you’ve never sent an email before, the screen will be blank, and you will be asked to add a new topic.

Fill out the form by providing a subject and text of the email.  You can attach files which will also be sent to the students.  When you’re ready to send out the email, check the “Mail now” box at the bottom, and click “Post to forum.”