Good morning,
Announcements are a wonderful tool for engagement, as I mentioned back in January during the faculty workshop. They can keep students up to date on important course changes, provide syllabus reminders, help with class-wide troubleshooting, give space for ad hoc discussion, and offer a chance for supplementary instruction. They also persist on the course, unlike messages sent through Inbox.
Today, let’s look at announcements and some different ways to set them up in Canvas.
Announcements are created on the Announcements page. Previous announcements are copied over if you copy course content, so if you’re reusing an old course or copied from another faculty member, there might be some announcements already there. Double-check with Student View to make sure there aren’t any old announcements still visible:
Note that this announcement was sent out last spring—it could be confusing for students as is! I would delete or edit it to hide it.
To create a new announcement, click on the + Announcement button at the top-right of the screen:
On the announcement details page, it’s best practice to give the announcement a clear title, as that’s the first things students will see before they click into the full announcement. From there, you can use the text box as you would for any other assignment or page in Canvas.
Some ideas of what to put in the announcement include:
If you go to “Insert,” “Link,” then “Course Link,” you’ll see a menu like the above to directly insert links to course pages. You can link to the assignment directly on the announcement.
Once you’ve added your announcement content, scroll down to the bottom of the page for the options:
If you check the option to “Delay posting,” you can schedule the announcement to send at a specific time. I scheduled many announcements in one of my courses since I always had an announcement go out on Monday and Thursday.
If you “Allow users to comment,” you can create an ad hoc discussion for students. For assignment reminders, you can ask, “What questions do you have?” For supplementary instruction, you can solicit feedback.
It can be challenging to encourage activity on ungraded announcements, but opening comments gives that option to students. At minimum, you could “Allow liking” on announcements to offer a chance for students to engage.
Once you save your announcement, if you’ve set up a delayed publish time, students won’t be able to view it, but you’ll see it on the Announcements page. If you didn’t delay, it will publish immediately. Students will typically get an e-mail copy of the announcement based on the default notifications.
To make announcements appear on the home page, go to Settings from the course menu, then scroll to “more options.” Click that, then you’ll see an option to “Show recent announcements on the Course home page.” Check this option and change to “1” to have a link to your most recent announcement visible to students on Home.
It will end up looking something like this:
The purple dot tells students the announcement is new. It appears right above the modules if you don’t have a custom home page. They’ll need to click to view the full announcement.
As announcements can be customized and have a permanent home on the Announcements page, they are a great communication channel. My students enjoyed my weekly Thursday supplement last semester, which wouldn’t have worked as just links adding to Modules. Likewise, announcements helped me reiterate due dates and have a bit of fun through shared social media posts and YouTube embeds.
I encourage you to explore announcements if you haven’t already!
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