Communications

WebAssign provides a number of features for communicating with students and other instructors at your institution without having to use email.

  • Private messages are messages about any topic that you send to students or to instructors or teaching assistants who are helping you with your class. You can use your class roster to select recipients of private messages.
  • Ask Your Teacher messages are messages that students send you directly from their assignments in WebAssign. In an Ask Your Teacher message, you can view the assignment question about which your student is asking, along with their current and previous answers.
  • Extension requests are messages that your students send you requesting additional time to complete an assignment. You can approve or deny a student's request directly from the message, and you can set and explain any penalties that are incurred if your student uses the extension.
  • Announcements are messages that are displayed on the Home page for your students, and can provide important information such as a course description, links to the syllabus or other class materials, or notification of a canceled class.
  • Forums are message boards for you and your students to post messages about topics that you define. Messages in forums can be viewed by the entire class, and provide a way to stimulate class participation and discussion outside of the classroom.

You can access all of these features from your Communication page. From the toolbar, click Communication, and then select a class from the drop-down menu, if necessary.

Note
When you create a new course, by default students can send you:
  • private messages
  • Ask Your Teacher messages
  • extension requests
If needed, you can turn off any of these features.

New sections, copied sections, and courses created by copying a section all copy the communication settings from the original section.