Why you should use Canvas Announcements

kbink
Community Contributor
7
3376

It's the start of another school year, so what better time to use a tool that will make communicating with your students so much easier.  Announcements is so much better than just sending an email to your whole class. If you are not using the Canvas inbox, you will have to go through the trouble of getting all your students' emails and making them a group list in your email program.  If you are using Canvas inbox, it's pretty easy to email the whole class, but with the flood of emails students will be getting from instructors and TAs at the start of a semester, it is really easy to lose an email.

Wouldn't it better if you had a tool that:

  • automatically notified every student in your class and
  • showed up on the course home page the next time students go to the course site and
  • had all the announcements you ever sent for the course in one place where students could easily find old ones and read new ones?

Bonus points if that tool would allow you to:

  • easily link to things in the course site and
  • create your announcements early and have them post later at a date you choose and
  • automatically shift those posting dates when you start a new semester!

This is why you should be using Announcements.  Announcements has all of those features, including all the bonuses!

Creating an announcement

When you want to send an announcement to your entire class, choose to add an announcement (instructions).  

  1. You create the announcement.  You can add links and images or videos using the rich text editor and link to assignments, pages, or files directly using the content selector.
  2. Underneath the text box choose to add a delay date. Even if your delay is minutes, having a delay date will allow the date to automatically shift when importing your announcements to a new Canvas site. (Thanks boles‌ for the clarification!)
  3. You can also choose to attach files and allow commenting and liking. 
  4. When you save, students are notified there is an announcement based on their notification preferences.  By default this is usually this is email but it can also be by text if students make that choice!

Setting announcements to show on home page

To ensure your announcement shows at the top of the home page you need to adjust the course settings

  1. Go to Settings > Course Details
  2. Scroll down and click on More options
  3. Check the box by  "Show recent announcements on Course home page" and choose how many announcements you want to show.  One is usually enough, or choose two if you communicate often, but avoid three as it takes up a lot of space on the screen.
  4. You can also choose "Disable comments on Announcements" as the default.

322892_pastedImage_2.png

Shifting posting dates for a new semester

This process is pretty easy.  When you import your course content from one Canvas site into another, choose to shift the dates (instructions).  Not only will the assignments' dates shift, so will your delay posting dates!  Never again will you have to create that test reminder email!

A few warnings:

  • If you allow comments on announcements, it looks a lot like a discussion, but it cannot be found under the Discussions.  The announcement and all its comments stay under the Announcements item in the navigation menu.  This can be confusing to students.
  • Announcements will not be sent out if the course is not published.  Additionally, students that have never been in Canvas and have never clicked the Canvas agreement (like freshmen) will also not get announcements.  For this reason we recommend that any announcements before the semester starts are sent through your institution's system of record. *For the University of Minnesota, that would be MyU.  Go to your course roster and scroll down to find the Notify All button.
  • This doesn't work for sending emails to individual students, sections or groups.  The Canvas Inbox is the tool that will do that for you.
  • When you import your course to a new site, if you select all content, all the announcements will also be copied over.  If you did not set a delay date, your old announcements may be visible to students!
    • Announcements with a post date before the course is published will be visible to students as soon as the course is published. These announcements are not sent to students unless you edit the announcement. After editing and as soon as you save the announcement, it will be emailed to the address students have set up in their notifications, unless you have set up a delay date.(Thanks again boles.)  
    • Be sure you either delete or set a delay posting date (instructions) on imported announcements before publishing to prevent students from seeing the all the imported announcements immediately.

Did I miss any Announcement functions?  How do you use this tool in your courses?

*The CBS-RLT Tech Tip is written by academic technologists at the University of Minnesota, College of Biological Sciences.  It may contain references to Canvas settings and integrations that are specific to that institution. 

Updated 9/17/19

7 Comments
rconroy
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Great reminders, especially around this time of year!  @kbink  Thank You for this! 

Bobby2
Community Champion

Brilliant list of reasons and how to, thanks so much  @kbink  Nice Work.

A great reminder to make the most of this tool.

I really like the option of a teacher recording themselves in an announcement too. 

evanp
Community Participant

Good stuff Kalli...I thought I'd add just one more "warning" and a fix.

Warning:  Announcements doesn't have a folder of deleted items...so, if you delete it you have to know a trick to bring them back.  Thank goodness "Undelete" works!  

jbielecki
Community Participant

Is there a way to send an announcement to only certain students? For example, every semester, I want to send a message to only the students who did not submit a particular assignment.

I know I can do this through the gradebook, but I can't save the text of the message there. I have to retype the message every semester. I also know that I can search old messages in the Inbox, but the only way to search there is by person, not by text content. I'd have to remember who I sent a message to last semester in order to find and copy the text. I suppose I could just keep a Word document with the text of all my recurring messages, but that seems silly.

I also know that I can get a message to select students through assignment comments, and I'm glad that Canvas now allows us the option of saving comments. However, I don't think students notice assignment comments as much as they do announcements, Inbox messages, or emails. (I know I don't.) 

What I've ended up doing is sending the announcement to everyone but including the wording, "If you did not submit...." I hate that I'm wasting good students' time and annoying them with stuff that's irrelevant to them. In fact, I think when students get messages that don't apply to them, it makes them more likely to see ALL messages as irrelevant.

I just noticed that there is a "Share" option on announcements where I can share them with select people, but after researching the Canvas Guides, it looks as if I can only share with other instructors, not students. Am I understanding this correctly? 

Does anyone have a suggestion?

kbink
Community Contributor

I think everything you wrote is correct.

I think I would recommend doing this through the gradebook.  It is just so easy to add everyone vs. doing it through the inbox.  Maybe a document with standard text is a better way to go.  

I wonder if a feature idea where some standard text could be automatically inserted into this function would be worth requesting.  It might be interesting to see if anyone else would like it.  

If you do go for a feature idea, be sure to link it here so others can find it and vote it up!

Kalli

jbielecki
Community Participant

Thank you, Kalli, but I don't know how to suggest a feature idea or "to link it here so others can find it and vote it up...." Also, coach @Chris_Hofer told me that new feature ideas aren't being accepted until February: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Question-Forum/Points-or-benchmark-grading-schemes/m-p/548.... If anyone reading this knows how to do that and wants to suggest it for me, please do!

Chris_Hofer
Community Coach
Community Coach

@jbielecki ...

That's correct...  the entire Feature Idea process is temporarily on hold until early February 2023.  At this time, nobody can create new Feature Ideas, comment on existing Feature Ideas, or give star ratings to those existing Feature Ideas.

Idea Conversations: The Path Forward