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ahh. - I see the quickmail block allows you to select a subset of students to send an e-mail to... forums don't let you do this.... your description in this bug "teacher be able to e-mail Students, en-masse in a course" is possible in core moodle at the moment by using a discussion forum. however, e-mailing a selectable subset of users within a forum is not.
Yes. Not only does QuickMail allow e-mailing student subsets, it e-mails immediately. Forums do neither, at least as far as I've seen. The key word here is "immediately." Forum posts don't appear in my e-mail Inbox for hours-
aha!
 there's a little checkbox at the bottom of the page when posting a new discussion topic called "mail now" - tick the box and it sends it right then!  Thanks, Dan. I've always done exactly as you indicated, so something else must be involved in delaying our forum e-mails. I'll talk with our Moodle administrator.
I would say that quickmail is a very good block. For us, a very important feature is the ability to select only certain students or sets of students to receive the message. Quickmail does support attachments, and it keeps a history of messages. It allows for a subject line, which helps distinguish messages. In addition, when the message is sent is not affected by user digest settings. IMHO, forums do not provide these particular features.
I agree with A.T. Wyatt; Quickmail's ability to send attachments, use groups, keep a message history and have individualized subjects are all pluses, as is the ability to instantly send a message. Yes, you can choose the "send now" message from a forum ... but I'm guessing that if someone's in digest mode, they won't get that message any sooner than they normally would.
Quickmail provides an alternative method of reaching students, one that satisfies certain use cases that forums do not. Plus, it's functionality that Blackboard has, and that new faculty coming from that LMS expect. It's a block we've used extensively since going live with Moodle, and at this point I'd say it's an essential part of our roll out. |
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using a forced subscription forum to manage this is really good as it keeps all course related information in one place - (your course homepage) - but also makes use of the e-mail medium as well.