Reminders

It happens to all of us. Life happens, we get busy, an email gets lost in the shuffle, and we forget about stuff. That's where reminders come in!

By default, online students are sent an email reminder after 14 days of inactivity. (To change the default settings, and learn about the different types besides online students, see the Account Settings page.) Any activity by the student, even as simple as logging in to their account, resets the timer.

Once the student has been inactive for the requisite amount of time, the student is automatically sent a reminder via email.

Hopefully the reminder will do its job and get the student back on the bandwagon. But if not, after another 14 days, the first reminder will be canceled, and another will be sent. If there is still no activity from the student, a third and final reminder will be sent after another 14 days. If at any time the student becomes active, the "maximum three reminders" counter gets reset, and were they to go inactive again, there is the potential that they could be sent another three reminders.

At any time, you can see a student's reminders by going to their profile and clicking on the tab with the bookmark. (If the student has never been sent a reminder, there won't be a reminders tab.)

In the example below, the student was sent a reminder on January 24, but didn't respond. The reminder was canceled on February 7, when a second reminder was sent. The student clicked the link in the email and responded, which is why that reminder has a date displayed in the "received" column, and is colored green. Subsequently, the student went inactive again, and has now been sent the maximum three reminders. At this point, the system will just sit and wait and hope that the student will become active again.

If Reminders Aren't Working

It's possible that all the reminder emails have gone to spam, so if you have an alternate way of contacting the student, this would be a good time to reach out to them and see if they would like to continue. Even if not, it would be worth it to try to send them an email, as an email sent from a personal address is more likely to wind up in someone's inbox than an automatically generated email like the reminder emails that BFO sends.