eCampus & E-Mail

Users of the learning platform (teachers & learners) have a personal mailbox with which they can communicate with other users of the learning platform by exchanging messages. Also from courses and groups, the members there have the opportunity to deliver course/group messages to all or selected members. This is done, for example, at the end of an event to provide further information to all participants.

As already mentioned, these messages are also forwarded to the university's e-mail system, so that all participants also receive this message as an e-mail. In the e-mail client, the sender of this message is, at first glance, the person who also sent the message on the learning platform. However, a closer look shows that the e-mail address behind it is noreply. ecampus@th-owl. de:

• E.g: „From: Anton Mustermann <noreply.ecampus@th-owl.de>"

If the e-mail is replied to, the Reply-To e-mail header field, which is also available, is used and now contains the correct sender address:

• E.g: „Reply-To: Anton Mustermann anton.mustermann@th-owl.de“

This distinction between From and Reply-To guarantees that the university's learning platform always sends messages with a valid university email address. This configuration is necessary for security reasons and currently common email programmes for MS Windows, Apple macOS/iOS/iPadOS and Google Android support this combination of the From and Reply-To header fields.

Thus, replies to such learning platform user messages to the sender are in most cases correctly sent from the e-mail program. However, this configuration occasionally leads to the following errors and misunderstandings:

• Autocomplete - The email client history means that the email programme remembers addresses that have already been used and offers them via autocomplete when creating an email. So if an attempt is made to create an email to Anton Mustermann in the example above, the email programme also offers "Anton Mustermann <noreply.ecampus@th-owl.de>" in addition to "Anton Mustermann <anton.mustermann@th-owl.de>". If the "wrong" entry is carelessly selected from the autocomplete, the message is sent to the address noreply.ecampus@th-owl.de.
• Unsupported email clients - Some email clients do not support the Reply-To email header field. As a result, the "wrong" header field From is used when replying to an email from the learning platform and the email is also sent to the address noreply.ecampus@th-owl.de.

In addition to personal messages or messages to an entire course, there are other actions on the learning platform that are not necessarily personalised. Nevertheless, such actions are provided with a so called system message, which is also forwarded to the university's e-mail system. Such actions are, for example, course and group recordings or the removal of members from a course or group. Changes in weblogs or other teaching/learning tools are also communicated with such non-personalised system messages. The sender of these system messages is always "From: eCampus TH OWL <noreply.ecampus@th-owl.de>". The current configuration of these system messages also leads to errors and misunderstandings from time to time:

• A reply to a system message – A reply to a system message is sent to the address noreply. ecampus@th-owl. de and does not reach the responsible contact person who initiated the system message (e. g. course entry, new blog entry, etc. ).
• Out-of-Away Notification – Out-of-Away Notifications (auto-responders) also respond to system messages from the learning platform.

The learning platform uses the sender email address noreply.ecampus@th-owl.de for the delivery of user and system messages. This address is acknowledged with a direct reply to the sender. This Noreply address only appears when emails are sent from the learning platform to the university's email system.

• Learning platform User message
  From: „Anton Mustermann <noreply.ecampus@th-owl.de>"
  Reply-To: „Anton Mustermann <anton.mustermann@th-owl.de>"
• Learning platform System message
  From: „eCampus TH OWL <noreply.ecampus@th-owl.de>"
  Reply-To: „eCampus TH OWL <noreply.ecampus@th-owl.de>"

In this way, known stumbling traps are answered with an information e-mail.

For better recognition of user and system messages sent from the learning platform, these outgoing e-mails are preceded by the text "[eCampus TH OWL] " in the subject line.

• E. g. : [eCampus TH OWL] Admission to the course Mathematics II

This way you get a quick overview of the system from which the message was sent. This label is a first step in differentiating the different higher education systems (learning platform, examination portal, etc. ) towards transparent and barrier-free communication of different systems via e-mail.

All system messages from the learning platform are given the functional signature already established in S(kim) at the end of the system message with the contact options e-mail(support(at)th-owl.de) and telephone (+49 5261 702 2222)for contacting problems, questions and suggestions.

User messages can also be provided with individual signatures. So it's identical to your college e-mail signature. You can find exactly how to set this up on the learning platform under your personal settings and there on the Mail Settings tab. Further information will be available shortly in the eCampus Quick Start and information on the correct design of your university signature on the university Intranet.

For a basic understanding, it is important that even correctly addressed e-mails from the learning platform are not returned to the learning platform. These only reach the person who sent the message as a user message from the learning platform. This means that all messages from the learning platform are forwarded to the university's e-mail system; replies from the e-mail system are not sent back to the learning platform. They remain in the university's e-mail system.