Audit announcements to confirm distribution?

[ChrisDavis]

Does anyone know how an instructor can audit course Announcements to confirm they were distributed to enrolled students?

[mzimmerman · Accepted solution]

Hi @ChrisDavis 

Can you clarify what you mean by "distributed"?  Announcements are posted in the course.  The "Student View" will allow the instructor to see if the announcement is currently visible to students.

Whether or not students receive any kind of notification that a new announcement has been posted in the course--and when and how they receive that notification--depends on the students' own Canvas notification settings.

[mzimmerman · Accepted solution]

Hi @ChrisDavis 

Can you clarify what you mean by "distributed"?  Announcements are posted in the course.  The "Student View" will allow the instructor to see if the announcement is currently visible to students.

Whether or not students receive any kind of notification that a new announcement has been posted in the course--and when and how they receive that notification--depends on the students' own Canvas notification settings.

[Chris_Hofer · Accepted solution]

Hi @ChrisDavis ...

In addition to the information you got from @mzimmerman, there is also an access report that you can view for each student in your course.  It would show you the number of times announcements were viewed:

How do I view the course access report for an individual user?

In addition, there may be some data you could get out of New Analytics (specifically in the "Weekly Online Activity" tab):

• How do I view weekly online activity analytics in an interactive chart graph in New Analytics?
• How do I view weekly online activity analytics in a data table in New Analytics?

I hope this extra bit of info will be useful for you.  Let Community members know if you have any questions...thanks!

[ChrisDavis]

Thank you both @mzimmerman @Chris_Hofer for the incredibly prompt replies! I am acting on the behalf of an instructor's request, and should have been more specific on using the term distribution (my newbie stripes are showing 🙂 

Yes, the student view should prove sufficient for them to confirm the Announcement went out. I will spend some time looking into New Analytics and relay what I find to the instructor.

I think what they are after is a tell-all report indexing the where, what, and when of all students' activities in a course, and that may not be possible based on other topics I reviewed. At best, I would imagine this would be accomplished using API, but it is not the sort of personalized solution I'd want to support indefinitely.