Communication
Artemis enables students, tutors, and instructors to actively participate with its communication capabilities. Various communication features allow students to engage with peers and ask all kinds of questions whereas moderators (e.g., instructors and tutors) can provide general course information and answer content-related questions. Communication can be made in different contexts, namely for lectures, exercises, or courses. Course participants can also message each other to communicate in private. Below, you can find more information on specific features and how to use them.
Enabling Communication
Artemis courses will by default enable all the communication features.
In case you do not want to provide users with these features, you can disable them on course creation by unchecking the
respective checkbox (Enable communication features
) - it can also be edited afterwards.
Course-Wide Messages
Artemis automatically creates course-wide channels for course-wide topics, such as
Organization
or Tech Support
, and various elements of a course, namely lectures, exercises, and exams. Messages can be written within these channels on the course messaging overview, which is shown in the screenshot below.
This video provides an overview of the course-wide channel types existing in a course:
Lecture Messages
Messages that are specifically related to a certain lecture.
These messages can also be created on the detail page of the lecture they belong to.
Exemplary lecture detail page with messages:
Exercise Messages
Messages that are specifically related to a certain exercise.
These messages can also be created on the detail page of the exercise they belong to.
Exemplary exercise detail page with messages:
Course Communication Overview
The Communication
space of an Artemis course serves as overview for all course-wide messages in a course.
Here, users can easily query, sort, and filter existing messages.
Private Communication
Users of a course can communicate in private via the Messages page. (see image below) The page consists of a collapsible Conversation sidebar on the left, where users can search for other participants of the current course and start a conversation with them.
If the recipient is browsing another conversation when they receive a new message, an icon with an unread-messages counter is displayed in their conversation sidebar, next to the affiliated conversation that the new message was sent to. This way, users become aware of the new message within that discussion.
The authorities of tutors and instructors are more restricted in the Messages Page compared to the Course Communication Overview. Messages of a conversation are exclusive to its participants and are only editable or deletable by their respective author.
Messages do not consist of titles. Users can continue a discussion around a specific message topic by clicking the messages’ “Reply in thread” button, which opens the Thread sidebar (see image below). The Thread sidebar is a collapsible sidebar located on the right-hand side of the Messages Page when displayed.
This video shows how link previews work in Artemis:
If the message content contains links, a preview of the link will be shown under the message. This way, users will have a good understanding of what that link is about. If they prefer not to have a preview, they can hover over the preview and click the appearing X button. The preview will be removed.
If the message contains more than one link, the preview will not have a preview image of the link to have more compact previews for multiple links.
Features for Users
This section captures the most important features that are offered to any Artemis user.
Search, Filter, and Sort Messages
On the course communication overview, a user can query all existing messages according to the following criteria and their possible combinations:
- Text-based search
Message ID (prepend hashtag
#
to message identifier, i.e. #396)Contents of Announcement-Message Title
Contents of Message Context
- Context filters
Lecture
Exercise
- Course-wide topic
Announcement
Organization
Random
Tech Support
- Other message characteristics
Unresolved Messages
Own (messages current user has authored)
Reacted (messages current user has reacted or replied to)
- Sorting Configurations (ASC/DESC)
Creation Date
Number of Votes
Number of Answers
A simplified version of this feature is available on the exercise and lecture details page as well.
React on Messages
To foster interaction between users, we integrate the well-known emoji reaction bar. Each user in the course can react on any message by making use of the emoji selection button. The ➕ emoji serves as the up-voting reaction, which influences the display order of messages.
Reference Course Entities
Users can reference to different course entities within their messages, such as other messages, course exercises, course lectures, and attachments of these lectures. All references are then prepended with icons which are unique to the reference’s type, to help users distinguish them conveniently. In the image below, we see all possible types of references that can be created in an Artemis message.
Reference Messages
If users want to refer to other messages, they can integrate a simple pattern including the hashtag (#
) combined with
the message identifier. A message’s identifier is appended to the message title (such as seen in the screenshots above).
When clicking a message reference used in a message’s text, the user is navigated to the referenced message.
Reference Course Exercises
Users can refer to exercises of the current course, via the dropdown menu Exercise
available on the posting markdown
editor (see image above). The following types of exercises are prepended unique icons to help distinguish the type of the
exercise being referenced.
Text Exercise
Quiz Exercise
Modeling Exercise
File Upload Exercise
Programming Exercise
Reference Course Lectures
Users can refer to lectures of the current course, via the dropdown menu Lecture
available on the posting markdown
editor (see image above).
Reference Lecture Attachments
Users can refer to lectures of the current course, via the dropdown menu Lecture
available on the posting markdown
editor (see image above). Here, lecture attachments can be found in a nested structure.
Reference Lecture Attachment Units
Users can refer to lecture attachment units of the current course, via the dropdown menu Lecture
available on the posting markdown
editor, see image below. Here, lecture attachment units can be found when users hover over the specific lecture.
Reference Lecture Unit Slides
Users can refer to lecture unit slides of the current course, via the dropdown menu Lecture
. Here, slides can be found when users
hover over a specific unit, see image below.
After the user references a single slide they can see it as an image included in the message. Additionally, they can preview the slide in order to easily read the content by clicking the image.
Reference other course members
Users can mention other course members within a message, by either typing an @ character or clicking the @ button available on the posting markdown editor. By typing in the name of a user to mention, the author of the message can search for a certain user they want to mention as demonstrated in the video below.
Reference channels
Similar to course members, users can reference public and course-wide channels of a course by either typing an # character or clicking the # button available on the posting markdown editor.
Mark Your Message As Resolved
Marking a message as resolved will indicate to other users that the posted question is resolved and does not need any further input. This can be done by clicking the check mark next to the answer message. (see image below) Note that only the author of the message as well as a moderator can perform this action. This is helpful for moderators to identify open questions, e.g., by applying the according filter in the course overview. It also highlights the correct answer for other students that have a similar problem and search for a suitable solution.
Features for Moderators
The following features are only available for moderators, not for students.
Pin Messages
By clicking the pushpin icon next to the reaction button of a message, a moderator can pin the message. As a consequence, the message is highlighted to receive higher attention.
Features for Instructors
The following feature is only available for instructors that act as moderators.
Creating Course-Wide Channels
When creating a lecture, exercise, or exam, the creator can decide on a channel name as well. The name is automatically generated based on the lecture’s/exercise’s/exam’s title but can be adapted if needed.
The video below provides a demonstration for the creation of a course-wide channel:
Message Announcements
Instructors can create course-wide messages that serve as Announcements.
They target every course participant and have higher relevance than normal messages.
Announcements can be created in the course messaging overview by selecting the Announcement
channel.
As soon as the announcement is created, all participants who did not actively refrain from being notified will receive an email containing the announcement’s content.