Instructional Design & Online Course Support

University of Wisconsin

  • Home
  • Contributors
  • Course Design
  • Online Teaching
  • Tools & Technology
  • Policies & Procedures

Reusing Old Announcements

Posted: December 21, 2020 | Last Modified: October 6, 2022 Leave a Comment

One great way to build social presence is through announcements. An original announcement (one created in the course and not copied over from a previous course) has the instructor’s profile picture; this reminds students that the instructor is active in the course. However, announcements copied from previous courses during the course copy process do not have a profile image. Unless the instructor signs their name, students may not know who posted the announcement, and social presence suffers.

Additionally, in 2021 the Department of Education released clarification of what constitutes “regular and substantive interaction,” which is required for an online course to be defined as distance education. The clarification is still somewhat vague, but in a peer-to-peer meeting of other AACSB schools, it was discussed that Announcements, if they have been wholesale recycled from one term to the next, do not fall under the regular and substantive definition. Announcements that have been edited and refreshed, do.

With these points in mind, instructional designers will not automatically include previous announcements in our course copy process.

If you would like to reuse announcements from a previous term, you have three options: 

  1. Save announcements in a Word document
    This works great if you have simply, text-based announcements without many links in them. This will enable you to better organize, edit, and curate your catalog of announcements. In addition, once you have your profile picture set up in your Canvas user account (this is a best practice), your image will appear next to each new announcement you create, thus bolstering your valuable social presence. 
  2. Save announcements in an unpublished Page
    This is the best option if you have announcements with embedded media or links to locations in your course. You won’t loose your embedded media, and the links will update when the course is copied to the next term.  Create a new page, do not publish it, and copy and paste all of your announcements that you’d like to save in that page. Next term, you simply need to copy and paste them into new Announcements as needed. Be sure to let your instructional designer know if you are using this method so they know to watch out for this when they copy the course for the next term.
  3. Copy individual announcements as needed
    Perhaps the simplest method is to simply copy and paste announcements from the previous course as you need them. Open the previous course in a tab, open the current course in another, and copy and paste.

With all these methods, you will need to edit the announcements for accuracy and currency to meet the Dept. of Ed’s guidelines.

 

Filed Under: Online Teaching, Tools & Technology Tagged With: Announcements, Canvas, Instructor, Instructor Presence, Social Presence

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

About This Blog

Through the partnerships we form with our instructors, we develop engaging and interactive online courses. Here you’ll find ideas on course design informed by the latest research and teaching strategies that build community and instructor presence. We’ll also we share our experiences with technology, with Canvas, and with administering our online educational programs.

Affiliations



Tags

Academic Integrity Accessibility Announcements Assessment Canvas Copyright Design Fundamentals Discussion EDI Evaluations Extra Credit Feedback Fundamentals Grades Groups Instructor Instructor Presence Kaltura Kaltura Capture Learning Materials Learning Objectives Multimedia Notifications Open Educational Resources (OER) Quick Tips Quizzes Reflection Rubrics Social Presence Student Syllabus Troubleshooting Turnitin Written Assignments

iDocs · Schneider Social Science Hall 115 · University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire College of Business · BIZHELP@uwec.edu

Copyright © 2014-2023 UW-Eau Claire and the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System

Copyright © 2023 · Metro Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in