Forums and Email

How do I change how often I receive emails from Pou Manawa Akoranga?

Please use the table of contents on the right to access support related to email and forum postings.

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You have 3 options to choose from related to when forum posts and announcements are sent out to you.

• "No digest" - Meaning forum posts and announcements are sent out individually at the time that they are posted
• "Complete" - Once per day you will receive an email that contains all the forum posts and announcements meant for you, as well as all the text of each post
• "Subjects" - Once per day you will receive an email that contains the subject headings only of all the forum posts and announcements meant for you. To read the text of the posts, you will need to login to Pou Manawa Akoranga

To make the change...

Select "Preferences" from the drop-down User Menu at the top-right of any page on Pou Manawa Akoranga.

On the Preferences page, click "Forum preferences"

Change "Email digest type" to your preferred setting...

Click on "Save changes"...

How do I subscribe to a forum?

To subscribe to multiple forums within a course page, open the 'slider' menu by clicking on the green half circle then clicking on Forums in the activities block.

You can select to subscribe or unsubscribe from all forums in the course - please note, the Announcements forum is set to forced subscription, you cannot unsubscribe from this forum.

Or you can change the subscription to an individual forum by clicking on the button to change the setting to 'yes' subscribed or 'no' not subscribed

How do I post a new forum topic?

Please use the table of contents on the right to access support related to email and forum postings.

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How do I reply to a forum post online?

Please use the table of contents on the right to access support related to email and forum postings.

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What is an online conversation?

An online conversation is like having a conversation in a face-to-face classroom, but online.

Things to know about online conversations include:

• The discussion will be started by your lecturer
• You can only reply to the discussion started by your lecturer or to posts from others in your group.
• You can view posts from people outside of your group but you can only reply to people in your group.
• You need to participate in the online conversation if it is an assessed part of your course.

Requirements

Read the requirements for online conversations in your course outline.

You will need to participate in the conversation 3 times over the set period. Any conversation contributions outside of the set times will not be considered when your participation in the conversation is marked.

See below the example of a student in the Rimu 1 group, this student can only reply to other students in Rimu 1.

You can select another group from the visible groups selection box, here you can read the conversations from other groups but you cannot reply.

How do I use my email program to reply to a message from Pou Manawa Akoranga?

Please use the table of contents on the right to access support related to email and forum postings.

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Note - This will not work if you receive forum postings as a daily digest. You need to receive messages one at a time in order to make use of this feature.

Click on the "Reply" button in the email program you are using (see the example that follows).

Now take a look at the very odd email address that the email will be sent back to. This is perfectly fine and nothing to be worried about. That odd email address is how Pou Manawa Akoranga figures out where the email it receives has to be placed.

It is very important that you delete all the contents of the email before you type your response. If you don't do this, then all of the text that you send back to Pou Manawa Akoranga will be inserted into the forum all over again.

Now that you've deleted all the text from the old email, you can safely type in your reply and click "Send" (as you see in the image below).

And finally (after around 30 minutes) your email should turn up as a forum posting in Pou Manawa Akoranga...

Why am I getting forum posts from forum ____ ?

Please use the table of contents on the right to access support related to email and forum postings.

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• In order to get access to a course, you have to be enrolled in that course
• When you are enrolled into a course, you are automatically subscribed to any forums in that course that are set to "Auto-subscribe" (which you can unsubscribe from) or "Forced subscription" (mostly for New and Announcements)
• When you reply to a forum you may automatically be subscribed to this forum depending on your forum notification settings under preferences in your profile
• Note - The main exception is the "Site News" forum, which all users of Pou Manawa Akoranga are automatically subscribed to in order to be alerted to any technical issues occurring

How do I stop getting forum messages?

Please use the table of contents on the right to access support related to email and forum postings.

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It is important that you understand that when you unsubscribe from a discussion or forum there is the potential for you to miss out on important news and information. Please think carefully before you unsubscribe.

 If you don't want to receive posts related to a specific discussion that has started, make sure you are logged into Pou Manawa Akoranga and use the "Unsubscribe from this discussion" option in the email that you received (see below).

If you don't want to receive ANY posts from that forum, make sure you are logged into Pou Manawa Akoranga and use the "Unsubscribe from this forum" option in the email that you received (see below).

There is no option to unsubscribe!?

This means that the forum has most likely been set up as a "Forced subscription" forum, meaning you have no option but to remain subscribed. There may be a valid reason that this was done. Please talk to the person running the course and ask them why the forum has been set up this way.

How do I know that an email I have received has come from Pou Manawa Akoranga?

Please use the table of contents on the right to access support related to email and forum postings.

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There are a number of visual clues that you can spot in an email from Pou Manawa Akoranga. Have a look at the example below (which is a forum post that was also sent out by email) and note the following clues.

1. The "From" email address says that it has come from Philip Roy, but the email address is "noreply@pma.ecnz.ac.nz". This is the email address used by Pou Manawa Akoranga to send out all emails.Philip is mentioned as he is the author of the post.
   
2. The 'Breadcrumbs'...a series of links that show you where on the Pou Manawa Akoranga site the message was posted. In this case, you can clearly see that the message was posted in the "Site news" forum
3. Unlike regular email addresses, this one is showing an image/avatar next to the sender's name. Some email systems will block this image, but at other times you might see a picture of the person who sent the email (if they have uploaded a photo to Pou Manawa Akoranga)
4. The series of links at the end of the email. Note how these links mention "Unsubscribe" and "forum"? You wouldn't typically see links like that in a regular email.

Why do people's profile pictures not always appear in messages I receive?

Please use the table of contents on the right to access support related to email and forum postings.

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The first reason could be that it is because the person hasn't actually uploaded a profile image to Pou Manawa Akoranga.

There is also another reason that is more complex to explain, but have a look at the following image that shows two versions of the same message.

The reason the image isn't showing on the left is because the program displaying the email message isn't logged in to Pou Manawa Akoranga. This might sound like an odd comment to make, but the email application can't access the image (for security reasons) and so instead, it just displays the default grey avatar image. There is no technical fix for this.

I received a "could not be authenticated" email message - why?

Please use the table of contents on the right to access support related to email and forum postings.

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I sent an email reply to Pou Manawa Akoranga and received message back that says my email "could not be authenticated, since it was sent from a different email address than in your user profile. For the message to be authenticated, you need to reply to this message."...what's happening?

This is a feature that Moodle uses to block spam. It thinks your email isn't legitimate, but it could be for a number of reasons, including that you are replying to a post that is more than 4 weeks old, or you are using a different email account than we have on record. To 'release' the email (and have it appear in Pou Manawa Akoranga) just click on "reply" and send the email.

If you have changed email addresses, please contact Student Services. If the problem continues, please email the eLearning Helpdesk.