Announcements

Owned by Alisa Cunnington (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Dec 04, 2024 by Gareth Seymour
4 min read

Announcements allow instructors to post information to all students directly within a course site. They can be scheduled to show immediately or only on specific dates, and can be addressed specifically to groups or specific sections if restriction is required.

Routine use of the Announcements tool provides a centralized and consistent way of sharing important information to help students stay on track with deadlines and course changes. Announcements can also be scheduled to help boost engagement through frequent and regular communication.

Students see Announcements through the widget on a site’s homepage (although this depends on which course Homepage layout is in use) and, if the site is Active and has not not past its End Date, will receive an accompanying email notification unless they have adjusted their own Notification Settings.

Announcements feature the full HTML/text editor and can thus contain images, videos, and links, including Quicklinks directly to other site components (e.g., an upcoming Quiz).

Announcements will not trigger email notifications if created (or imported from another site) when a site is either:

Students will not receive a flood of notifications for existing announcements upon site Activation.

Announcements are not a foolproof method of student contact as Notifications are managed at the user-level and students could disable Announcement notifications (or all notifications from a site).

Students cannot reply to email notifications and instructions should be provided for alternative methods of contact (e.g. the instructor’s actual email address) if that is the goal.

Access Announcements

There are a few different ways to access the Announcement tool. Much of the functionality is available directly in the homepage widget, but more is available through the main tool page. The Announcements tool with all features can be found in the following locations:

  1. If the site Homepage has the Announcements widget, click Announcements or use the drop-down arrow to see a full list of options, including Go to Announcements Tool.

    Announcement widget on a course homepage
    The Announcements widget on a course homepage.
    screenshot of the announcements widget drop-down menu.
    The widget drop-down menu.

  2. Through the navbar item Course Tools → Announcements.

  3. Through the navbar item Course Tools → Course Admin and then Announcements.

Main Announcements page

Selecting Announcements from the Course Tools option on the navbar brings you to the main Announcement page:

Featured Buttons

New Announcement - use the blue New Announcement button to create new announcements in the Brightspace Site. Learn more from the Create an Announcement article.

More Actions - Select More actions to access the following options: Reorder, RSS, Notifications, and Restore. Details on these options are available in the article Announcements More Actions: Details.

Show Search Options - expand the list of searchable filters to view announcements that meet specific criteria

Delete - selected announcements are softly deleted from the Brightspace site.

Announcement Options

Selecting the drop-down arrow next to an announcement will yield the following options:

The most notable of these options are:

  • Dismiss from widget - This will hide the announcement from the widget on the course homepage. Students will have to go to the announcements tool itself to see it.

  • Pin to top - Pins the announcement to the top of the Announcements tool. This is normally used for informational or high-priority announcements.

  • Copy to Other Courses - Allows the announcement to be imported to another course. This can also be done using the Import/Export/Copy Components tool.

Please contact CPI at edtech@brocku.ca with any questions or comments about the contents of this site.