Navigating Canvas: Announcement Options for Enhanced Student Engagement
Instructor Request
Online Learning Team,
Wishing you a Happy New Year! As we embark on a new term, I find myself eager to enhance the student experience by integrating real-world examples into our course content. Often, I stumble upon valuable podcasts or webinars that could significantly enrich our discussions. However, I need a streamlined method for sharing these resources at various dates throughout the term while also allowing for informal engagement and discussion. Your guidance on achieving this would be greatly appreciated.
Looking forward to a fruitful year and term ahead!
Professor Dan Nounzè
Solution: Using Announcements
Helping students to make connections between the classroom and the real world is very important for adult learners. We propose that you use the Announcement feature in Canvas to do this. It is a valuable tool for communicating with students and can do more than just share an upcoming weekly agenda, topics to be covered or reminders about due dates. It can be used for fostering interactive communication and engagement.
Announcements are very versatile. Information can be shared with students in a variety of forms: text, images, audio, video, attachments or links. Let’s explore the options available when creating a new announcement in Canvas.
Adding an Announcement
1. In the Course Navigation section, select the Announcement link
2. Click on the +Announcement button to open the Rich Content Editor.
3. Add a topic title and enter the content of the message. In the Rich Content Editor, a few things you can do are:
- Share important information with all course users.
- Add files, media, links, documents, or other content. By clicking on the available icons, you can add:
External Link or Course Links
Upload Image, Course Images or User Images
Upload/Record Media, Course Media or User Media
Upload Document, Course Documents, User Documents
Embed Code (e.g., videos to explain difficult concepts)
- Additional Options:
- Attach files by clicking “Choose Files” and selecting the file to share
- Delay posting until a specific date and time
- Allow students to comment or to like replies
- Enable a podcast feed which will allow users to use an external podcasting channel to listen to course content on their own time and at their own pace.
4. After finalizing your announcement content and settings, click “Publish.”
5. All announcements and posting dates will be visible on the Announcement page.
6. To add additional information to an announcement once it has posted, open it and click “Reply” to access a new Rich Content Area. Students can only reply to announcements if enabled.
When using announcements to post information for your course, ensure that you and your students have configured the Canvas Notification Settings appropriately. Refer to the September CTE newsletter article, “Leveraging Technology for Your Advantage: Account Settings and Notifications in Canvas” for more information.
Conclusion
Instructors can leverage the features of Canvas to foster student learning and engagement. Sharing real-world topics that connect to course concepts via a Canvas announcement is just one example. To explore other features that Canvas offers, the Online Learning Team has compiled a list of resources which are available on the Online Learning Instructional Support page in SharePoint, and we look forward to responding to your questions sent to OnlineLearningStaff@alliant.edu.