Setting Up and Using Your Hopkins E-mail

There are two types of email accounts that you may need to use, your Johns Hopkins Enterprise Mail (JHEM) account, which is the email account that is every student is assigned along with their JHED login ID, and a WebCT email account, which you are assigned when you register for or teach an online course.

Your JHEM email
Your WebCT email

Your JHEM email

By default, your JHEM email is [your login ID]@jhed.jhu.edu. To use this email account you must first activate your JHED ID. To accomplish this, you may wish to follow our tutorial for Activating your Johns Hopkins Enterprise Directory (JHED) Login. Once you activate your JHED ID, log in again by going to my.johnshopkins.edu or my.jhu.edu. Once logged in, you can access your email two ways. You can click on the "email" tab at the top to access your email.

Portal email tab

You can also click on the "myJhed" tab at the top to access your JHED account. There, you will see a series of applications, including JHEM e-mail listed under "Applications":
Portal JHED application screen

Click on the "Email" link next to "JHEM". This should give you access to your account via a web-based email client. If JHEM isn't displayed in the Applications panel, you should instead see a link that says "Request a JHEM Account." Click the link and follow the instructions to access your email. If JHEM isn't displayed in the Applications panel, and you don't see a link to "Request a JHEM Account," you need to contact the Hopkins help desk at 410-516-HELP.

Congratulations, you have now successfully logged into JHEM! You can now access your email at any time by going to the website jhem.jhu.edu or visiting the Hopkins portal website and logging in with your JHED login ID and password.

Additionally you can:
Set up e-mail aliases (easy to remember alternatives to your default email address) to use.
Set up a desktop e-mail client, such as Outlook or Eudora, to access your email.
Learn more about JHEM email by visiting the Hopkins IT website.

Your Web CT email

WebCT is the software system used to participate in online courses. When you sign up for an online course, you are assigned a WebCT email. Many third-party email accounts, such as those provided by Yahoo and AOL, block course-related email, marking it as "junk email" or "spam". For this reason, we require students taking fully-online courses to use a WebCT email account for all course-related correspondence.

WebCT email isn't an email account in the conventional sense. A more appropriate description would be that it is an internal messaging system used only by WebCT. This means that emails are sent, received, and stored only within WebCT rather than in an external email account like Yahoo. If you'd like, you can set up email forwarding so that class messages sent to your WebCT email are forwarded to your external email account. However, mail forwarding will only allow you to receive messages in your external account, not reply to them. To reply, you will need to log in to your WebCT course and send an email using the built-in email system.

Some advantages of this internal WebCT email system are:

Email from the WebCT course doesn't get mixed in with personal or work-related email.
Instructors and students don't have to keep track of all students' email addresses.

Every student is required to take an online orientation course before you begin your first online course. During this orientation, you will be instructed on how to use and administer your WebCT email account. If you have any questions, call the Johns Hopkins campus help desk at 410-516-6496.