Announcements

The Announcements tool in Brightspace allows instructors and TAs to create course announcements that help communicate course updates, changes, and new information to your students quickly and effectively. Since Course Home is typically the first page students see when they access their courses in Brightspace, the Announcements area is a good place for displaying important information. NOTE: Students are not able to post announcements.

If you decide to use announcements to communicate with students, you may wish to add a note to that effect in your course syllabus. Also, remind students to subscribe to notifications in Brightspace or in their Brightspace Pulse app. Information for students is available here.

Sample Uses

Announcements are a helpful tool to share the following information with students:

• Welcoming to the course and setting expectations.
• Posting course updates such as schedule changes, class cancellations, reminders.
• Providing weekly overviews
• Connecting students to specific resources within the course using links.

Creating Announcements

• In your Brightspace course, click the down arrow next to the word Announcements and select New Announcements Item from the dropdown menu.
• Enter a clear headline, such as “Class cancelled for January 19” and some content for the message such as “Class is cancelled for January 19, 2017, due to inclement weather.”
• Click Publish at the bottom of the page to save the announcement.
• This announcement will appear in your Brightspace site at the top of your Announcements widget. For students with notifications configured, it will automatically send notifications to their email and/or phone.

Video Instructions

The following short videos introduces some basic features of the Announcements tool. More detailed information can be found in the Brightspace Community. 

Creating Announcements

Managing Announcements

Using Announcements to Communicate with Students

Announcement Tips

• Add a note to your syllabus and/or use the discussion or mail tool to advise your students how you will communicate class cancellations to them.
• Keep your announcements brief and to the point. If you have a longer announcement, you may wish to send it via email or post it in the discussion forum.
• Keep your Announcements area current by updating or removing outdated items.
• Do not use announcements to share course content – use the Content tool for that purpose.

If the Announcement widget is not visible in your course site, please contact the CITL’s Support Centre.