Bruin Learn - Announcements

Owned by Elyse Brusher (Deactivated)
Last updated: Nov 10, 2021 by Tom Garbelotti
4 min read

The purpose of this article is to take you through the basic steps to creating announcements as well as to explain different settings and best practices for using announcements.

Creating an announcement

Prologue: make sure to follow these steps before creating any announcements

  1. Publish your course--students will not receive your announcements if you course is unpublished.

    1. Please note: If an announcement is scheduled to post before the course start date and the students can only participate in the course between these dates setting is enabled, students will not receive announcement notifications.

  2. Turn on the setting allowing your to enable comments on your announcements.

    1. Click on the settings tab on the left side of your screen.

    2. Scroll down to the bottom and click on “more options”

    3. Uncheck “disable user comments on announcements”

This does not mean that comments will be enabled for all of your announcements. It simply means that you will have the ability to enable comments for individual announcements.

Main text:

  1. Navigate to the announcements tab on the left side of your screen

  2. Click on the “Add announcement” button in the upper right-hand corner of your screen.

  3. Add a title and content to your announcement.

    1. In the content box, you have the option of typing a message, including links, videos, or pictures

  4. Attach a file if you would like.

    1. Please note that you can only attach one file per announcement.

  5. Choose the sections that will receive the announcement.

    1. Please note that the default is for all sections to receive the announcement.

    2. If you would like to send an announcement to a group of students (rather than a section), you may do so via their Group Homepage. For more information on this please see this article: Bruin Learn - Groups and Sections

  6. You will then need to address the following options:

  • Delay posting allows you to set a specific day and time for your announcement to be sent.

    • Please not that the default is for the announcement to be sent out immediately.

  • Allow users to comment allows students to reply to your announcement and to other students' replies.

    • If you do not immediately see this setting, you will need to enable it, by completing the steps listed in the prologue section of this document.

    • 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.

  • You can enable a podcast feed for your announcements. A podcast is a way to distribute digital content for download on the Internet. A podcast feed is the file you use to distribute your discussion for users who want to subscribe through external podcasting channels. 

    • The Record/Upload Media Comment tool in the Rich Content Editor must be used for updates to be added to the podcast feed. Text-only discussion posts are not included in the feed. The button underlined in red is the one students need to use in this case. It will then prompt them to record a response or to choose a recording from their files.

  • Allow liking allows for students to like each other’s responses, but not your original post.

8. Make sure to Save your announcement.

a. As previously noted, your announcement will send immediately once your save it unless you use the delay post feature.

Viewing Announcements

You can view the announcements for your course by clicking on the Announcements tab on the left side of your screen.

  • Announcements are listed in reverse chronological order by default, with the most recent announcements appearing first.

  • New/unread announcements are displayed with a solid blue dot next to them, while read comments have an empty circle.

  • Each announcement reply has its own options icon.

    • If it is a comment on an original post, you will see the following options.

  • If it is a comment on a comment, you will have the option of returning to the parent comment.

 

Viewing an individual announcement:

  • In the lower left corner of the announcement, you will see a search bar that you can use to locate specific replies or commenters.

  • Next to the search bar, you will see an “unread” button. You can use this to filter by unread replies.

  • Next to the unread button, you will see an eye button, which you can use to show or hide deleted replies.

  • Next to the eye button, you will see buttons that will allow you to expand or collapse replies.

  • In the upper right corner, you will see the edit button, which you can use to edit the announcement.

  • Next to the edit button, you will see the options icon, which you can use to mark all existing posts/replies as read, delete the announcement, and/or close the announcement for comments.

  • Below the edit and options button, you will see two numbers: the left number indicates the number of unread comments and the right number indicates the total number of comments.

 

Epilogue (Related links):

How you include an RSS link in your announcements: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-add-an-external-RSS-feed-to-an-announcement-as-an/ta-p/771

How to copy an announcement to another course: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-copy-an-announcement-to-another-course/ta-p/888

Send an announcement to another instructor: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-send-an-announcement-to-another-instructor/ta-p/887