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[severino_gervac]

How can recent announcements be included in the Front page?

[Chris_Hofer]

Good morning, @severino_gervac ...

See if this Guide will be of some help to you: How do I show recent announcements in the Course Home Page? 

Let Community members know if you have any other questions about this...thanks!

[SusanNiemeyer · Accepted solution]

Here are the steps:

1. Go to Settings in your Course Navigation Bar
2. Scroll down the page and look for "More Options" (little blue letters)
3. Click on "More Options"
4. Click on the box next to "Show recent announcements on Course home page."
5. Choose how many Announcements you want to show on the Home Page (I'd recommend one or two announcements.)
6. Click on "Update Course Details"

***ATTENTION CANVAS COURSE DEVELOPERS***  

You all need to make this process much easier for instructors. What you have now is NOT INTUITIVE. When I was a new Canvas user, it took me months to figure this out. I have explained this process to others scores of times. Here are some ideas:

1. Remove the words "More Options" and simply list the options at the bottom of the Course Details Page. It is REALLY HARD to find the words "More Options" in tiny blue letters at the bottom of a long page.
2. I would argue, though, that the best solution would be to add a GEAR ICON to the Announcements page. Then put the global settings there, similar to the gear Icon for the Gradebook.

[Chris_Hofer]

@SusanNiemeyer ...

Sounds like you have a Feature Idea suggestion here, and I see you've already added some feedback a couple months ago to this one:

Redesign of "more options" element in course detai... - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)

That's probably going to be the best place to continue that discussion to provide "real world" examples for Canvas engineers to look through so they can make improvements.  🙂

[SusanNiemeyer]

Hi Chofer,

That Idea Conversation dates back to 04-18-2018. Nothing has been done.

You and I both spend a lot of time answering the same questions from our colleagues, here, and at the FB group "Teachers Using Canvas." This question comes up repeatedly. You know it. I know it.

All the Canvas Instructure team has to do is make the options visible in the Course :Details page without requiring instructors to click on "More Options." I'm sure that this could easily be accomplished.  

I don't get it. 

[Chris_Hofer]

@SusanNiemeyer ...

I agree with you that this does seem like something easy to fix/implement.  However, I've learned that's not always the case.  This is outlined in the section "If my idea doesn't align with a priority, is it still important?" within this Guide (specifically the last couple paragraphs): What is the feature development process for Instru... - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com).  In my own experience, I have submitted several Feature Ideas that I thought were good ideas and would be somewhat easy to develop, but they still have not been developed (unfortunately, it's harder for me to find my ideas in this Community interface compared to the past Community interface, so I don't have any links to share right now).  But, at the same time I have had a handful of my Ideas developed that I thought would never see the light of day...and I'm not sure why they were developed...as they didn't get many votes/star ratings.  So, there must have been some other sources of feedback they had gathered which triggered a need for development (?).  It's a bit puzzling to me, for sure.  🤔

[SusanNiemeyer]

Just explained this process to yet another colleague. I really wish the Canvas development team would consider suggestions that make using Canvas more intuitive.