Announcements
Course announcements are an ideal way to post time-sensitive information critical to your students’ success. Students benefit from being reminded of due dates or exam schedules. You can also use announcements for changes to your syllabus or to clarify course materials.
You can add, edit, and delete announcements from the Announcements page. When you add an announcement, you can also send it as an email to students in your course. Students will receive the announcement in email even if they don't log into your course.
Course announcements appear on your activity stream, when you enter a course, and on a course’s Announcements page. Institution announcements appear on the Learn login page and the activity stream.
Topics on this page include:
Announcements on the Activity Stream
Announcements appear in the Today and Recent sections of the activity stream.
Most announcements disappear from the activity stream when students view them within their courses. If you schedule an announcement, it appears in the activity stream at the scheduled time.
Announcements inside a course
New course announcements appear as a pop-up window the first time students enter your course. Students need to close the New Course Announcements window before they can view course content. After students close the window, it won’t appear again. If you post new announcements, the window appears again with only the new announcements.
Students receive a course announcement and an activity stream notification about course groups they need to join. If students haven't joined a course group, that alert remains in the activity stream.
Select the circle beside an announcement to mark it as read. If you don’t select the circle, you’ll see a number beside the Announcements page that displays the number of unread announcements.
To mark a read announcement as unread, select the circle again. Read announcements are displayed with a darker color than unread announcements on the Announcements page.
Announcements page
From the Announcements page, you can create, organize, mark as read or unread, and search your announcements. From the Course Content page when you first enter a course, select Announcements at the top to go to the Announcements page.
- View a summary of your announcements. View the number of course announcements by status at the top of the page. Announcements have three statuses: Posted, Scheduled, and Draft.
- Sort columns. Sort announcements by the title, status, or the number of viewers.
- Search announcements. Select the Search announcements icon that’s displayed as a magnifying glass and enter keywords to locate a specific announcement.
- Create a new announcement. Select the plus sign icon to open the New Announcement page.
- Manage announcements. Open an announcement's menu to edit, copy, or delete an announcement.
- Mark as read. Select the circle beside an announcement to set an announcement to read or unread.
Watch a video about Announcements
The following narrated video provides a visual and auditory representation of some of the information included on this page. For a detailed description of what is portrayed in the video, open the video on YouTube, navigate to More actions, and select Open transcript.
Video: Announcements in Blackboard Ultra Course
Create an announcement
On the Announcements page, select the Create announcement icon that’s displayed as a plus sign to create a new announcement. You can only send an announcement to all members of a course. Use a message if you want to contact a specific student or group.
Enter a title and message for the announcement. Use the options in the message editor to format text, embed multimedia, and attach files.
You can insert audio and video recordings in your course announcements.
You can also send an email copy to all course members, including yourself. Select Send an email copy to recipients below the editor. Recipients must have a valid email address in the system. You can't send an email copy for an announcement scheduled to display in the future. Emails about announcements are always sent and aren't controlled by your institution’s global notification settings.
If you edit an announcement after posting it and select Send email copy to recipients and post it again, the email isn't sent. You’ll need to send a new announcement.
Select Save to save your announcement as a draft. When you’re ready to send out the announcement, select Post now on the Announcements page.
What do students see in the email?
In the email, embedded content appears as links. Students can select the links to view the content.
Schedule an announcement
You can create an announcement for a future event, such as a reminder about a course event or due date. You can schedule announcements to post automatically in your course on the date and time you choose. You can also hide announcements when they're no longer relevant.
Select Schedule announcement from the New Announcement page. If you schedule an announcement to display in the future, the option to send an email copy is not available.
When you schedule an announcement, a Show on date and time is required. You can optionally select the Hide on check box and select the date and time.
Use the date picker to schedule announcements.
If you no longer want to schedule the announcement, select Schedule announcement again.
On the Announcements page, the scheduled announcement appears with the Scheduled label in the Status column.
Edit, copy, or delete an announcement
You can edit, copy, or delete any announcement in your course. On Announcements page, open any announcement's More options menu.
- Select Edit to change the title or message. You can also edit the scheduled time to post and turn the time on and off.
- Select Delete to permanently remove an announcement from your course.
- Select Copy to make an exact copy of an existing announcement and update as needed.
If you edit or copy an existing announcement that has Send email copy to recipients selected, the announcement will return to the draft state and you must send the announcement again.
