TAMUDirect provides an easy way for instructors to email class sections, view and download lists of currently enrolled students in your classes, and send mail to individual student email addresses. In this tutorial, we're going to go over how to send messages to students in your classes using the TAMUDirect mailing lists.
Let's talk a moment about what happens when you send a message to a TAMUDirect list. The process occurs in three steps:
First, you send an email to a TAMUDirect mailing list. Next, you get an email from the mailing list manager, called Sympa, asking you to verify the message. This gives you one "last chance" to proof the message before it's sent to everyone on the list. Then, if you confirm the message, your email gets delivered.
Now, let's show you how to send a message to a mailing list.
To get started, go to tamudirect.tamu.edu and log in with your NetID and password.
You can click the Course Lists link here, or at the navigation bar. If you have department or college lists, you'll see additional links to these lists on this page.
To view your lists, you can click the Expand List Tree link or the + button next to the list.
Now you can see the actual list name, the list address, information about the list, and links to view the student addresses and to download a list of students in your section.
If you use an email client like Microsoft Outlook or Novell GroupWise, simply click the list address or click the mail icon next to the list. A new email message automatically opens in your default mail client. Type the subject and body of the message, and click Send.
Let's say you use a webmail client like TAMU Email or Gmail. To send a message to a list, just open a new email message, copy the list address, and paste it in the "To:" field of your email. Complete the rest of the message and click Send.
If you prefer, you can save a mailing list address as a contact in your email address book. Then you won't need to log in to TAMUDirect every time you want to send a message to a mailing list. All you have to do is go to the saved contact and send a message. A semester's class mailing list actually stays active until next year. For example, your spring 2008 lists will become inactive when SIMS begins sending spring 2009 course information.
This concludes the tutorial. To learn about verifying your message, please view the tutorial on "Approving a Message Sent to a TAMUDirect Mailing List".