Where messaging lives
- Teacher inbox, an overview across all your courses, showing new/unread messages from any student.
- Per-course inbox, click Inbox on a specific course dashboard to see just that course's conversations (this is also where an unread-message badge shows up).
- Student inbox, students see their own inbox in their portal, scoped to the instructor(s)/courses they're enrolled in.
Messaging stays between you and your students. A
co-instructor invited into one of your courses can grade and teach in it, and does not have message threads there. Course conversations are private to the course owner.
Starting and replying to a conversation
- Open a course's Inbox and click New Message to start a thread with a specific student, or open an existing thread to reply.
- Type your message and send, it appears instantly in the student's inbox the next time they check their portal.
- Students reply the same way from their own inbox, and the thread stays attached to that course.
Email notifications
Because not every student checks the portal daily, ProfDesk can also send an email notification when a new message arrives, in both directions (student → instructor and instructor → student), as long as the recipient has a verified email address on file.
Opt-out available on both sides. Instructors can turn off message-notification emails from My Account; students can do the same from their own My Account page. Turning notifications off never hides the message itself, it only stops the email; the message is still waiting in-app.
