[Announcements] Announcements: Lock to home

[joshua_cohen]

Certain announcements are critical to the classroom success and having them always present on the front page previews would be ideal to maintain their classroom visibility.  We’d like a checkbox option in the announcement settings that would allow for the instructor or admin to lock that announcement to the home page.  While the settings may allow for the 5 most recent to be shown on the front page, if an announcement was locked to the home, that announcement would be visible and then the other 4 most recent would be visible, regardless of the posting date.

[perolavb]

It would be beneficial to be able to sticky/lock announcements in a course. You could argue that if the contents of an announcement is needed to be persistent, it should not be an announcement but rather content displayed in a dedicated content page or on the home page itself. However, the announcements element (#announcements_on_home_page) is very visible part of the UI and conveys crucial information effectively. Not every course use a home page so this behavior should also be represented in the announcements module with the locked/stickied announcements at the top of the list.

[kmeeusen]

Hi  @joshua_cohen ‌

You can set up your course to display up to five most recent announcements at the top of your home page. Learn more at https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-13115-4152682262 

I hope this is helpful,

Kelley

[perolavb]

Hey  @kmeeusen .

According to the idea description ‌ @joshua_cohen  is aware of that feature. This idea is about the ability to lock certain announcements to always be displayed on home page with no regards to the timestamp of creating the actual announcement. 

[venitk]

As a sort of trivial use case for this idea, I recently led a course for instructors to learn how to use Canvas. They are enrolled in a course as students so they can experience it as a student would. One of the assignments was to have them reply to a specific announcement. When that announcement was shoved out of the top 3 (what our Home page defaults to) as I posted more announcements as the week went on, it made it more difficult for them to locate to respond to. 

Using announcements to communicate frequently with students is a good best practice, but some announcements are more important than others. 

[joshua_cohen]

Yes, in many cases having the dedicated content on the page would be appropriate, however our institution follows a model such that instructors do not have the ability to adjust the content pages but do have ability to post announcements.  Thus, locking an announcement allows the instructor to always show important information for the duration they deem necessary.

[stacey_lebrun]

I've read through these comments and I agree. The ability to lock an announcement to the top is needed. Some announcements are more important than others or need to be shown for a longer time frame than others. Also, having the announcements load in chronological order is fine but then we should have the option of moving them around not just pinning one to the top

[jkranzow]

Yes, I completely agree.  The ability to lock an announcement is so important to how I teach.

[Trishutcheson]

I agree. We have a recent letter to share with parents on the pushing back of the date for returning to the school. A pinned announcement for the letter from our superintendent would be amazing.

[kstepp1]

I also work for an institution that locks content to instructors but allows for announcement edits. Would love to be able to pin an announcement to the top of the home page of a course. 

[mcordes1]

Although Canvas has the ability to pin a specified number of recent Announcements to the Home page, there is no way to pin and keep a specific announcement on the Home page. Similar to the Discussion page, it would be nice to have a pinned Announcement always appear on the Home page, in addition to a number of specified recent Announcements. 

For example, typically within my course, my Welcome Announcement contains information that is applicable for multiple modules within the course; however, in the current state, as soon I post a more recent announcement, my Welcome Announcement is pushed lower on the Home page. It would be nice to favorite my Welcome Announcement to always appear at the top of my Home page, regardless of how many announcements come after the Welcome Announcement. If I decided to unfavorite the Welcome Announcement, this announcement would just follow the normal order of recent announcements and either appear on the Home page or just the Announcement page depending on the settings of the course. I could then, favorite another announcement to appear pinned at the top of the Home page.