How do I add an announcement in a course?

[#1]

You can create an announcement to share important information with all users within your course and with users in sections of a course. In your notification preferences, you can choose to receive notifications for announcements created by you as well as replies to announcements you've created.

Notes:

• Your course must be published for students to receive announcement notifications.
• If you import course content from another Canvas course, you must manually enable notifications to receive notifications for imported announcements.

Open Announcements

In Course Navigation, click the Announcements link.

Add Announcement

Click the Add Announcement button.

Create Announcement

Type a title for the announcement in the topic title field [1] and add content in the Rich Content Editor [2]. You can also add links, files, and images to the announcement using the content selector [3].

Note: The Rich Content Editor includes a word count display below the bottom right corner of the text box.

Select Sections

By default, Canvas will send your announcement to all sections within your course. To select specific sections for your announcement, click the Post to drop-down menu and select sections from the list provided.  

Note: If your course does not have sections, Canvas will still show the All Sections option, and all course users can view the announcement.

Select Options

You can add an attachment to your announcement by clicking the Choose File button [1].

In the Options section, you can select various options for your announcement. You can delay the posting of your announcement [2], which allows you to schedule the announcement for a future date.

Additionally, you can allow users to comment on the announcement [3] and require students to reply to a post before seeing other replies [4].

You can also enable an announcement podcast feed [5] and allow students to like announcement replies [6].

Notes:

• By default, comments are not allowed in announcements unless the Allow users to comment checkbox is selected.
• The Allow users to comment option is persistent, meaning the option you select when creating or editing an announcement will carry over when you create a new announcement in the course. However, the Users must post before seeing replies option is not persistent.
• Comment options may not be available to you if announcement comments are disabled in your course. Check your Course Settings if you cannot view these checkboxes.

Save Announcement

Click the Save button.

Note: Unless you are using the delay posting option in Announcements, once you click Save, your announcement will immediately be posted in your course.

View Announcement

View the announcement in the Announcements Index Page.

[joetexas]

may help top lessen email number

[huvid]

This tutorial says that the announcement will be "sent" to all students in the course? What does that mean? On Blackboard, it meant that they received an email at the address registered with the school, plus a notification in their Blackboard home screen. How does "sending a message to the class" work on Canvas? Do they also receive emails and notifications, or is there some other mechanism? 

[huvid]

By the way, the links in the larger tutorial on "How do I view the announcements and RSS feed as an instructor/student" are not working. 

[linda_darrell]

I have used the announcement section many times. It is very easy to use and makes communicating with students efficient and effective. Students will receive alerts on their devices letting them know there is an announcement they need to view. I have also asked students to reply to the announcement as a way to let me know they have received it, and as a way to eliminate any confusion. 

[CanvasDocTeam]

Hi @huvid,

Students will receive email notifications on announcements IF they have elected to received those emails in their notifications. They also display in the Announcements page and can also be included on the Course Home Page. 

Cody

[bjmcdonald]

Can I make an announcement reoccurring, or can I make 2-3 announcements always appear at the top of the page?

[CanvasDocTeam]

Hi @bjmcdonald,

Currently there's not a way to create recurring announcements in Canvas or change the order that they appear (right now the most recent announcement displays first). We do have a couple feature ideas that suggest updating Announcements including Recurring Global Notifications / Announcements and Change Order of Announcements. If you'd like to support those ideas and add to the conversation, you can kudo the ideas and/or add comments. As a work around, you could create multiple announcements and choose the delay posting option to choose when they should post. Hope this information answers your questions. If you have any other questions, feel free to reach out. 

Naomi

[MThompson1029]

Hi!

I created an announcement in one of my sandbox courses, and then imported that announcement into two other courses.  It shows up in both of those courses, but not the original sandbox course. I'm not entirely sure why that is.

Thanks, Melissa

[MThompson1029]

And I figured it out literally seconds after I sent this question.  Nothing to see here 🙂

[CanvasDocTeam]

No problem @MThompson1029! Glad you worked it out.

Cody 

[quinngeneseo]

On 8-14 Cody said that students will receive an email notification of an announcement in Canvas "if they have elected to receive those emails in their notifications"

Where do students go to make that election and how do they do it?

Thanks!

[CanvasDocTeam]

Hi @quinngeneseo,

You can view more information about that process here: How do I set my Canvas notification preferences as a student?

Cody 

[mwashing2]

I'm using Announcements in multiple Canvas courses.  I'm having a issue with one of my courses, the "Posted On" date does not show up, it's blank.  Any idea why?

[CanvasDocTeam]

Hi @mwashing2,

Thanks for posting your question! Were those announcements copied/uploaded from another Canvas course? According to How do I copy an announcement to another course?, "Announcement posting dates are not included in announcement copies". Those announcements will still be visible to students though. If you have any further questions, please reach out. 

Naomi

[choppingm]

I have copied announcements from one course (at my institution this is a section) to several others and in the copied versions the identity avatar is the U icon.  Is there some way to set it to be my user avatar after (or on) copying? If not, copying is pretty useless: I might as well have copied and pasted from scratch. Apparently it didn't occur to anyone that we'd want our identity to go with the copy 🙂

[britanyfiest]

Hey

[CanvasDocTeam]

Hi @choppingm,

I just checked with our Support team and they've confirmed that it's intended behavior for copied announcements to strip the author's name. If you'd like to request a change to this functionality, you can create a feature idea for it. To learn about more about feature ideas, check out How do I create a new idea conversation in the Canvas Community? and How do idea conversations work in the Canvas Community? 

Naomi

[choppingm]

Thanks Naomi.  I'll just copy and paste the old-fashioned way, instead of using the copy function. 

[khoralek]

Is there a way to push out notifications only to students who have not turned in an assignment?

[CanvasDocTeam]

Hi @khoralek,

You can accomplish this using the Message Students Who option in the Gradebook.

Cody

[Pam60]

I noticed that you can allow likes on announcements. Can you allow likes without allowing comments? Also when you click on Allow Likes, it gives you the option to sort by likes. Does that mean we only see the likes or are they grouped in two groups, liked and didn't respond? How can we see the likes?

[cwerner]

Hello, I have an instructor who has a long announcement (350 characters).  Do Announcements have a character limit?

Thanks!

[CanvasDocTeam]

Hi @Pam60,

Yep. You can turn on liking without turning on comments. It's not currently possible to view the names of users that liked announcements or see who hasn't liked a comment. 

Naomi

Hi @cwerner,

There is a 253 character limit for announcement titles. There may be a character limit for the announcement message, however, in testing, I was able to add 20,000+ words. So your instructors should have plenty of space. 

Naomi

[cwerner]

Thanks for the info!!