After sending a broad announcement to the students on the site, we realized that students cannot self-unsubscribe from announcements, so we just won’t email out announcements any more.

We askd the developer for support of an unsubscribe option (basically as soon as we sent out the email and got a deluge of emails in our own inbox). They don’t seem to plan to fix the issue, even though it’s a liability for all of their customers.

So, with an abundance of caution, we can only send out emails in classes that have had no students who opted out (on a case-by-case basis). This goes for us, or any other instructors in the future, unless and until the developer fixes this oversight.

We’re sorry for any inconvenience. If you wish to see course announcements they will be in the Announcements section of the course landing page(s) when logged in. Site-wide announcements may be there, or in the Blog on the site.

—Crisses, as site administrator&

Reference: CAN-SPAM act US and other legislation in other countries that requires that bulk emails have an opt-out feature.