We’ve discovered a few things about how Canvas handles announcements that are vital in organizing your course and getting information to students in the way you mean to. Please read the following information very carefully, and ask your ID if you have any questions.
Posting Announcements Immediately on Creation
Announcements created and posted immediately (those that have never been delayed) will be appropriately sorted in the list because their publication and creation date is the same.
Importing Announcements
We don’t recommend copying announcements directly from previous courses (a better practice is to copy into a Word document and paste the text into the current course as needed). However, if you do, undated announcements brought over from a previous offering of the course need to either be delayed or deleted; leaving them undated will make them available to students immediately when the course opens. Click here for directions on delaying announcements.
If you are not ready to schedule your announcements before the course opens, we recommend you postdate them by several months–past the time when the course closes.
Posting Delayed Announcements
When you are ready to post the announcement, you must change the date to the time you want the announcement to run, even if you want it to post immediately. You cannot simply uncheck the delay box because that will sort the announcement according to its creation date. If you want a delayed announcement to run immediately, set a date to the current day and time.
How Do They Look in a Course?
Please see the image below for examples of how different announcements display. Click on the image to zoom in.
Depending on whether you post announcements immediately, delay them, or import them from another course, they will display to students and to you differently.