Why can't students receive email notifications for course invites on MATLAB Grader

I am an instructor and I am using MATLAB Grader to enroll my students.

I follow the steps in the documentation:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlabgrader/ug/enroll-learners-in-a-course.html#mw_a80f2591-b9aa-4820-ab20-822ef2d550be

I want to send the invitation email to the students in order to enroll the class. However, many of my students do not receive the invitation email.

The issue is reproducible. I have resent the invitation email, but those students still do not receive the email.

Is there a workaround to this issue?

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

The issue could be that the university system is blocking inbound emails from MathWorks for one or more reasons based on your IT policies. The IT Department of the university should be able to make an exception for emails to appear to come from the mathworks.com domain on behalf of one of their users. Essentially, you can ask the IT department to whitelist emails from "mathworks.com".

You can also try the auto-enrollment process suggested below:

1. Direct all of the students to first log into: 

https://grader.mathworks.com

at least once using their MathWorks account prior to enrolling them in the course. As long as the students have logged into MATLAB Grader at least once before the invitations are sent, they will be automatically enrolled in the course without needing to click the link in the emails. 

2. Then, send the invitation, and the students should see the course in their list of courses on their home page when logged into MATLAB Grader. Please note that the student’s MathWorks account MUST be the same email address the instructor used to add them.  

Please make note of the following caveats:

• Their MathWorks account MUST be the same email address the instructor used to add them. 
• Students cannot enroll/unenroll themselves from a course. Only instructors can do that.
• They could use an account with a different email, but MUST use the link sent to them.
• Alternatively, you can also use the Learning Management System (LMS) integrated version of MATLAB Grader, so the LMS handles course enrollments and notifications, and emails are no longer part of the process. Here is the documentation on this:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlabgrader/lms-integration.html

[Cris LaPierre]

Bullets 1 & 3 seem to contradict themselves. To clarify then. If a student is not receiving the email invite, then the work around is to

1. remove the student from the course.
2. Have the student sign into MATLAB Grader.
3. Have the instructor re-invite them to the course using the same email address they used to sign into Grader. They will automatically be enrolled now.
4. Have the student sign into MATLAB Grader and confirm they now see the course

For those who do receive the email, after clicking on the link, they can join the course using a MathWorks account linked to a different email.

You can tell if someone has successfully enrolled in a course hosted at grader.mathworks.com by inspecting the Manage People table.

The 2nd column displays the email used to enroll the student. This is the email the link is sent to. Students who have successfully enrolled in the course will display a name in the first column. If an email appears in the 3rd column, that means they are accessing the course using a MathWorks account linked to a different email address than the one the invitation was sent to.