Course Home - Announcements Tab

The Announcements tool gives you a prominent place to post important information for your entire class to see.

The instructor Announcements tab. The user is viewing the default 'Visible' tab, with three other filters available labeled Upcoming, Expired, and Draft. There are two total Announcements shown.

Post a new Announcement

Click + Add New at the top of the Announcements tab.
Enter a Headline, which will be displayed as a bold heading above the announcement.
Enter the Content of the announcement.
The Start Date of the announcement will default to the current time; to have the announcement become visible at a scheduled time, click the Start Date and choose a different date from the calendar.
Unless you intend for the announcement to remain visible forever, choose "Remove announcement based on end date" and set the desired date.
Add attachments if desired.
When you're finished, click the Publish button at the bottom of the screen.

You will end up within the instructor's Announcements tool. To get back to your homepage, click the course title at the top of the screen.

View and manage your Announcements

The announcements tab filters your course's announcements into four different views:

Visible announcements are currently visible to your students.
Upcoming have been scheduled, and will appear to your students at a later date.
Expired announcements were previously visible, but have passed their End Date and are no longer displayed to students.
Draft announcements have been written and saved as Draft, but not yet been published. Each draft announcement will not display to students until you edit and publish it.

If you want to see the exact Announcements that your students see, click Student View on the left-side menu, and then open the student Announcement tab.

To Edit an announcement, click the pencil icon beside it.

To Delete an announcement, click the trash can icon beside it.

Pinning Announcements

A welcome announcement has been pinned. It has moved to the top of the announcements view, and is highlighted with a dark bar down one side.

Normally, if you have multiple announcements visible at the same time, students will see them ordered by Start Date, with more recent dates higher up. If you want to force a specific announcement to remain at the top of the list, click the push-pin icon beside its headline. Pinned announcements display with a green bar beside them.

Styling Announcements

If you click the paint palette icon beside any announcement, you can set a colour and icon to appear beside that announcement.

The instructor is choosing aesthetic styling for an announcement. Eleven icon options are shown-- a megaphone is selected, but there is also a waving hand, an options gear, a calendar, and so on-- and three selectable colour options are available at the bottom.

There is no "official" definition or meaning for the colours or icons; use whichever ones you like, or whichever ones you feel clearly match the content of the message.