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.

communication-toggle

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.

messaging-page

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:

lecture-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:

exercise-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.

communication-page

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.

messages

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.

link-preview

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.

link-preview-multiple

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.

Verify User Authority

To build trust between users utilizing the system’s communication features, we prepend an icon to the author’s name in the headers of messages and their replies. The icon we introduce differs according to the role of the author within the course and reveals their highest authoritative role. Via tooltips that are shown as users hover over these icons (see images below), the system displays a brief explanation of that specific role. This way, the system builds trust in the author, and readers can tangibly confirm the origin of the shared information.

Instructor Authority

instructor-user

Tutor Authority

tutor-user

Student Authority

student-user

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.

message-with-references

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.

slide-reference-menu

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.

slide-reference

referenced-slide-preview

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.

resolved-post

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.