Canvas Announcements Policy

[mmoore1]

Do you have a Canvas Announcements Policy?  In other words, how do you decide when to use the announcements feature for an entire account in Canvas?  We are finding that the requests for announcements in Canvas is starting to grow, and it is difficult to serve all requests. 

[themidiman]

We share an instance of Canvas with other campuses (we're in the higher education sector). We decided collectively that a recommendation be that announcements be prioritized by reflecting Canvas functionality and support to get top billing. However with the individual sub-account admins can post things as needed that their administration is asking for. This has proved useful since the advent of sub-account announcements because it doesn't get in the way of local administration's wishes after they've been advised by the sub-account administrators of the intention for the policy. Otherwise we would end up with every single campus promotional message cluttering up the learning environment. 

[mmoore1]

Yes, this is our concern too with too many announcements.  However, we have noticed that attendance increased significantly at some events while using Canvas so now we are at a crossroads.  Does anyone know if there is a way to make a Canvas Announcer Role for Advertising and Marketers or is this just the wrong place to have events announcements?

[themidiman]

For a specific role, you should look at the permissions matrix and the Global Announcements permission, and be very specific as to how you give that role out. For our needs we leave this up to each of our sub-account admins because their specific campus needs are different. You might also want to get your faculty feedback how they feel about the potential for too many advertisements or marketing things posting for different needs. Use these to form your institutional policy and do your best to stick to it. 

[mmoore1]

Yes, we are taking this to discussion this week.  I am starting to agree.

[nr2522]

Hello,  @mmoore1 ‌.

I am of the opinion that Canvas is the wrong place for advertising events. Canvas is a learning management system, and the focus should be on coursework. If the event cannot be truthfully classified as "academic", it does not belong in Canvas. The student learning experience shouldn't be interrupted by a distracting banner when they log into Canvas that then diverts their attention from their coursework.

While I understand K-12 institutions try to use Canvas for every purpose imaginable, we in higher ed typically (but not always) have a greater breadth of resources that can be used for non-academic purposes.

Best regards,

Nelson

[themidiman]

This is our basis for our campus policy as well. My local campus administration has asked for certain things to be posted as their claim is always that people don't read their email, when in actuality they got themselves into this problem in the first place by sending too many emails, and they see Canvas as something that everyone logs into every day to do their school-related work. After I explain the intent of the global announcements being primarily for messages about the learning environment functionality, they typically have understood and then resort to other means of getting the word about event X, or initiative Y.

[aolsonpacheco]

Truth!

"My local campus administration has asked for certain things to be posted as their claim is always that people don't read their email, when in actuality they got themselves into this problem in the first place by sending too many emails."

[mmoore1]

Yes, I am beginning to think more like our colleagues here that Canvas really should be for academic pursuits, teaching, and learning.  There are other avenues for advertising on our campus, and probably yours to  @aolsonpacheco .

[mmoore1]

Good Point!  @nr2522 ‌

[audra_agnelly]

 @mmoore1 ‌, we're K12 so our use cases may not compare, but we only use global announcements to post Canvas-related announcements (major feature changes, grading period date reminders, bug alerts etc). It's rare for someone to ask us to post a global announcement as we have other systems in place in Canvas for different user groups to manage their communications,:

• A course for all staff in the district - we use this to send out updates about Canvas and other systems
• Content-area courses and individual school courses - These are for staff; managers of these courses can send out announcements to each their specific subset of users
• Grade level course (K-5) and whole-school courses (6-12) - These have all of our students and their parents enrolled and are used to send out school news or grade-level information 
• Subaccount admins - each school in our district has their own subaccount. Admins in those accounts have permissions to post global announcements, but we find this isn't widely used. We don't actively promote it and the aforementioned school-wide courses are generally used instead

I think the advantage of using announcements within courses is the ability to reread that message later on. With global announcements, once a user closes that announcement, they have no ability to go back and review it.

For other district-wide announcements (inclement weather days, upcoming PD opportunities, etc), systems that live outside of Canvas are used to alert the desired audience.

[mmoore1]

Thanks. I appreciate this insight and usage report.  We are thinking about doing the same as it can get cluttered and it seems like this should be a place for learning first.