Weekly Announcements

What are announcements

In MyCourses, announcements appear on the Course Home page which is the first thing students see when they enter your course. This means that it is the first chance you have to grab their attention each time they access your course and inform them of events, deadlines, assignments, industry news, and much more!

• 3 tips to connect with your online students
• Three ways to improve online courses for adult students

Tips for designing effective announcements

Many courses use announcements to communicate with students, but there are ways of making your announcements more effective.

• Create announcements for major course events at a minimum - for example, during the first week of the course to direct students on getting started, grading major assignments, etc.
  
  
• Notifications- encourage your students to register to receive notifications when new announcements are posted
  • Managing Notification Settings
    
    
• Keep it short and simple - cover no more than 1-2 topics in your announcements to students
  
  
• Customize your news items- use release conditions to customize who sees specific news items in your course
  • Release Conditions: Releasing a News Item Based on a Quiz Score
    
    
• Use formatting tools- make use of bulleted lists and other tools to make your announcements easier to read
  • A humorous look at what your font choice says about you
    
    
• Use color with care - color is a great way to make your announcements stand out but should not be overused (see notes below for accessibility concerns)
  
  
• Use Video Notes- simple to set up and easy to reuse, video notes allow you to personalize your course
  • How to create and insert a video note
    
    
• Use images- images can make your text-based announcements more visually appealing (see notes below for accessibility concerns)
  • Photos Public Domain
  • Flickr Creative Commons
  • Free Digital Photos
  • Pics4Learning

Accessibility Concerns

Designing with accessibility in mind is an excellent way to make your announcements more engaging for all of your students. For more on this design concept, watch this short video titled UDL at a glance. View the activity below for 10 steps to making your course more accessible. These steps can be used when designing announcements as well as in other areas of course design. They are simple steps you can take that will make your course more accessible to all.