Announcements help you share important information with others in your course. Unlike messages, announcements appear immediately when a student opens a course. Students are less likely to ignore the information that is shared in a course announcement because it demands attention before viewing course content. Creating announcements in Blackboard Ultra also ensures the posting of time-sensitive information. Announcements can be added for the following types of course activity:
- Due dates for assignments and projects
- Changes to your syllabus
- Corrections/clarifications of materials
- Exam schedules
Creating Announcements
From the Announcements Page you can add, edit, and delete announcements. When a new announcement is created you can also send a copy of it as an email to all students enrolled in your course, using this method it means that students will receive the announcement even if they don’t log into your course.
* If you forget to tick the email copy tick box before posting an announcement, although you will be able to update the current announcement and tick the email copy tick box, it will not send out emails as expected. You will instead need create a new announcement to unlock this functionality.
Adding additional Content to announcements
As well as adding written content to announcements you can also add other media rich content types including Images, Media, Recordings, YouTube Videos and Links.
Where to find announcements in Blackboard Ultra
When you create a new Announcement they will appear appear the first time students enter your course and learners will be required to either view all announcements or close the active window before they are able to complete their are able to access the module content. This announcement notification window will only appear once for the new announcement/s in question. If further announcements are created this process will repeated to ensure all learners see all new announcements,
The activity stream also displays announcements in both the Today and Recent sections with announcements disappearing once students have viewed them.
Schedule Announcements
You can also select the option to schedule an announcement to be released at a future date and time.
In this case the announcement will also appear in the activity stream at that scheduled time.
Students can also read and review current and previously created announcements by selecting View archive via the Details & Actions panel located on the Course Content page. Learners can also search announcements by inputting keywords to locate a specific announcement.
Course Announcement Page
From this screen, you can create, edit, copy, sort and delete announcements. You can also view statistics about each of your posted announcements including number of viewers.
- Summary of your announcements: This area of the screen displays the total number of course announcements you have made split into three types. Announcements posted, announcements scheduled to be posted and announcements still in draft format (not completed).
- Sort columns: This allows you to sort announcements by Title, Status or number of Viewers.
- Search Announcements: This allows you to use keyword searches to locate specific announcements.
- Create a new announcement: This option opens the create new announcement screen where you are able to create a new/scheduled announcement.
- Manage current announcements: Use this menu to edit, copy or delete current announcements.