Common announcement to all my classes

[badari_eswar]

i teach five different classes (classes, not sections! ) and I have an announcement to make to all my classes. Currently, the only way seems to be - make the announcement five times, once in each class.

Shouldn't I be able to make it once, for all my classes?

Note from the Community Team: We are aligning this with a very similar idea, https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/6507-post-announcements-in-multiple-courses-at-once" modifiedt....

[biray]

Thank you for your submission  @badari_eswar ​.

I certainly understand your frustration. Cutting/Pasting announcements repeatedly into a course can be a hassle. Have you tried opening your courses in separate tabs and simply cut/paste announcements quickly that way? I think that makes the process much more efficient. One of the nice things about Canvas is that you can courses open in multiple tabs.

Looking forward to your feedback.

[badari_eswar]

Biray,

I do that already! But it is a pain. I (we) definitely need a way to reach

all of my (our) students at once! I do hope this feature is built into

Canvas soon.

Thanks.

Cheers...

Ishie...

Badari S. Eswar (Ishie)

Badari.Eswar@SJSU.Edu

+1.415.545.8458

E279 Department of Computer Engineering

San Jose State University

One Washington Square, San Jose CA 95192-0180

[biray]

This idea is now open for voting.

[dlejeune]

I have the same issue.  I've tried uploading an announcement to Commons, but it is VERY slow and doesn't seem to appear I've I've told it to import into another course.  This should be an easy fix for those of us who must post the same announcement to multiple courses.  I have six separate classes and posting the same announcement six times is tedious.  I'm considering setting up an RSS/Atom feed, which may alleviate the issue until Instructure fixes this issue. 

[bbrywczynski]

Dan,

How does an RSS/Atom feed work?  I have the same frustration with announcements and am looking for a solution.

Thanks,

Brandon Brywczynski

[bbrywczynski]

Is there a way we can spread the word in the community about this possible fix?  I have done so at my school.  This is the first year for Canvas at my school and a lot of teachers (mainly older ones) aren't quite on board yet.  Are there ways we can spread the word to the Community at large rather than just within our schools?

[polly_mcmahon]

Yes!!! This is the same feature I have requested. Please let's do this!

[rsliger]

I agree.  I would really like this feature.  Cuttying and pasting mulitiple times to say the same thing is tedious.  I also worry that I'll forget to post it in one of the courses.

[polly_mcmahon]

Yes I agree and I made the same recommendation and also want the feature for emails too!

[ejp10]

There are situations at our university where a course coordinator may need to post a single announcement to 10-30 sections or more. Being able post to multiple courses at once would be useful in some situations.

It would also be nice to be able to select a set of courses for an announcement/email (e.g. all T sections, but not W or all ENGL 100, but not ENGL 340).

[creativityengag]

I want to add my encouragement, and suggest deeper implementation. I would love, as mentioned to share announcements, messages, images, files, and even wiki pages to courses by selecting from active courses. I often have to repeat the same process. This could reduce the need for me to cross list multiple sections. In addition to the per course selection. I'd like to see an easy way to push these pages and information to specific groups within a course.

[bgibson]

"Add External Feed" to your course Announcements area, in multiple courses, and post your announcement via RSS.  I have tested this out, and conceptually, it works, but the feed is not polled as often as I would like.

[jcrawford]

Definitely want to be able to make the same announcement across courses.  I would also like to be able to take an announcement received in one course and forward to others.  For example, some of our schools have created faculty and staff courses for their teachers.  Teachers would like to be able to forward certain announcements received in that course to students in their own courses. 

Thanks!

[allison]

Thanks everyone for your feedback. It sounds like the problem we're trying to solve is managing the same content across courses. I know that this problem is on our radar and we're actively looking at solutions. I will find out if the solutions we're considering include "master" announcements that can be published simultaneously in multiple courses.

[cjeffcott]

This would be very useful.

[jbrady2]

I work at a community college, and I could see this being useful if an emergency arose and an instructor was going to have to cancel classes for the day because a sub could not be found. It would allow the instructor to send just one message instead of needing to message each course. What would be nice is if it could be designed similar to how the current selection box in Conversations is designed for selecting multiple student recipients or all.

[matthew_mosher]

This would be a great feature for facilitating sharing office hours changes, scholarship info, events, etc with all classes quickly.

[n_sadasivan]

I too have this same problem.  I teach three classes as semester but as an visual and digital media arts teacher my students are familiar with the fact I like to update them on my twitter finds, events in the world, innovations, post-secondary or extracurricular opportunities, etc. that I find online.  I like to share that with all of my students whether I am teaching them or not.  Additionally, when school-wide events are happening,  I like to remind them.  It is definitely cumbersome to copy and paste the same announcement six times. 

[bgibson]

This may sound convoluted, but it works.  Add an "Notify All Classes" RSS feed to the Announcements section of each course with the "Add External Feed" option.

Create a Group "Notify All Classes" in one of your courses and add no one to it.  "Visit Group Homepage" and add "+Announcement".  You can copy the RSS feed URL that is created for the Announcements for this group.  Paste that URL in the appropriate windows as you create an external feed for Announcements for each of your courses.  *The one drawback I see currently is that I am not sure how often Canvas polls "external" RSS feeds.  So, although you post a new announcement under "Notify All Classes," it might not get disseminated to the other courses' Announcements immediately.  **Looks like it took about 30 minutes before the external RSS feed was polled.

You could use any RSS feed URL, from either within or without Canvas.  A WordPress feed, or some other app that creates RSS entries.

[kona]

Nice work around  @bgibson ​!