What are Announcements?
Announcements allow instructors to communicate with students about course activities and post interesting course-related topics. Course announcements are designed to allow instructors to broadcast information out to all members of a course or to all members of sections within a course.
Students may be able to reply to announcements, but replies are not considered to be a conversation and do not appear in the Inbox. Students may also be able to create announcements in a student group.
View the Announcements Overview video or learn more from:
- Announcements lessons for instructors
- Announcements lessons for students
- Announcements lessons for observers
Note: Admins can create global announcements for account-wide communication.
Open Course Announcements
In Course Navigation, click the Announcements link.
View Announcements
Course announcements display on the Announcements Index page. To communicate with students about the logistics of a course, instructors can add an announcement [1]. Instructors can format and add content to announcements using the Rich Content Editor features. Instructors can also use announcement options to allow others to reply/comment [2], enable podcast feeds, allow liking, and to specify a time frame for the announcement.
As soon as an instructor creates an announcement, Canvas takes care of notifying students according to their preferred notification settings. There are also unread and read indicators next to the announcements [3].
Instructors have the option of feeding posts from a blog or other information sources directly into their Announcements page using RSS. RSS feeds can be filtered by keyword to prevent irrelevant content from entering the course. Students who use RSS readers can subscribe to course announcements outside of Canvas.
Notes:
- You can use keyboard shortcuts to navigate individual announcements. To view a window with a list of keyboard navigation shortcuts, press Alt+F8 (on a PC keyboard) or Option+F8 (on a Mac keyboard) simultaneously on your keyboard.
- If an announcement was imported using a course copy, the Course Import Tool, or a blueprint course, the profile picture displays the letter U in place of a user's profile picture [4]. Additionally, copied announcements do not include a posted date and time.
When would I use Announcements?
As an instrutor, use Announcements to:
- Remind your students what they need to accomplish to stay on track.
- Point students to internal and external resources that will help them achieve course Outcomes.
- Leave a message for the entire class with video or audio comments.
- Celebrate student success and important events that may be of interest to your students.
- Feed a custom RSS feed related to the topic of the course to your students.
- Automatically share blog posts written by your students on Wordpress, Blogger, etc. with custom RSS feeds.
As a student, you may be able to view and reply to course announcements. You may also be able to add announcements in a student group.
