Tailor Announcements to specific sections or groups

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

 

It would be useful to have the ability to tailor Announcements to specific sections or groups in a course.

 

Comments from Instructure

 

For more information, please read through the https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-14284-canvas-production-release-notes-2018-03-10 .

52 Comments
KristinL
Community Team
Community Team

I'm glad to see that this idea is still being considered also! (I missed it while it was open for voting.) There are some great applications for this feature, and I look forward to hearing updates when they become available. Smiley Happy

sworrell
Community Novice

Still hoping to be able to direct "announcements" to specific "sections". I have multiple sections of a course that meets on different days as I bet many other educators do to. I really need to make announcements to the sections in addition to the whole course. What about a dropdown in Announcements that lets you select individual sections or, by default, the whole course? Thanks.

Renee_Carney
Community Team
Community Team
  Idea is currently in Product Radar Learn more about this stage...
lchallen
Community Contributor

Any update on where this is in the queue? I really hope this gets implemented soon. It's a great idea and would be really helpful for a number of my courses.

jbuchner
Community Contributor

Ha! It's been so long, that scrolling back to find my comments showed me the screenshot I uploaded. Dashboard does't look anything like that now, and getting to groups is even easier.

Nancy_Webb_CCSF
Community Champion

I do hope this idea goes into production, and this option be available in discussion posts as well as announcements if this idea goes forward. 

What would be the absolute best resolution would be to have EVERY activity or resource be section aware, as well as group aware.  Currently this is available in Assignments, using differentiated assignments.  Now if this could only be available in all settings! 

sworrell
Community Novice

Some people are missing the concept here, many instructors of courses with multiple sections (or periods) that meet on differents days/times, etc often need to send announcements to specific sections of a course. As in "Hey period 7, your project is due tomorrow, review the submission requirements" Right now a message like this goes out to all my sections-- period 1, period 3, period 4, and 7. It's very confusing for everyone. There needs to be something like a drop down menu in the announcements page that let's you select all course (default) or to specific section.

Administrators say things like- "oh, just make groups for that" which complicates things and should be unnecessary, or we get told to make 4 separate courses for the 4 sections of the same course which is ludicrous. 

Don't tell me to make groups when I already made sections! 

jbuchner
Community Contributor

It's not an "Announcement" but when I use "Inbox" and pick a class, by using the "To" line, I can click on the folder, and open up a drop down menu of many more options, including "Sections". I can pick a particular section, then by clicking on menus, send it to everyone in a section (including teachers) or just the students.

Nancy_Webb_CCSF
Community Champion

I agree  @sworrell , it seems unreasonable to have to create groups when sections already exist.  As  @jbuchner  points out, section awareness is built into Conversations (inbox).  It should be built into every aspect of a course.

Some of our instructors have chosen to have separate courses for each section rather than use Groups, but this can easily lead to problems when importing changes made in one section into the others.  Easy to forget one section, or import the old version which replaces the new one, etc. Or cause duplication.  Courses can wind up being different; not good for student success.

Think about going to Ideas open for vote, search on the term sections, and start voting on more section awareness in Canvas.  Course analytics by section, respecting sections when assigning peer reviews, module access to specific groups or sections, differentiated pages etc.  Thanks.

david_summervi1
Community Explorer

Fully support Announcements to sections please - same ability as we have in quizzes and assignments - I note this was flagged as on the radar two years ago.