D2L Brightspace: Create and Manage Announcements

FACULTY: This article explains how to create and manage Announcements in your D2L course shell.

Overview

FACULTY: The Announcement tool allows instructors to post course updates on the course landing page. It can be used to provide weekly reminders and help establish instructor presence in a course.

Article Sections

• Create an announcement
• Edit an existing announcement
• Delete, dismiss, and restore announcements
• Replacement strings in announcements 
• Learn more

Create an announcement

1. Go to your course’s main home page.
2. Open the Announcement Actions menu and select New Announcement. 
   
3. Enter a title in the Headline field.
4. Enter the body of your announcement in the Content field.
5. Select from any of the following optional settings below the text editor:
   • Under Availability, set a Start Date and End Date for the announcement.  An Announcement item publishes immediately unless you specify an alternative start date from the Start Date field.
   • In the Attachments section, you can choose to add a file, short audio, or video recordings.
6. Do one of the following:
   • To continue editing the announcement later, select Save as Draft. 
   • To release the item to students based on the Start Date, select Publish.

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Edit an existing announcement

1. Select the Actions menu for the Announcement you wish to edit:
2. Choose Edit
   
3. Edit your Announcement as you would like
4. Click Update when you are done

Below the text editor is a checkbox for Major edit.

As it indicates, it will restore the announcement for any students who have dismissed the announcement and send a notification to students who have enabled notifications.

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Delete, dismiss, and restore announcements

There are two ways to delete an individual announcement on your course landing page.

Deleting Announcements

There are two options:

From the announcement’s Action menu

1. Open the Actions menu after the announcement title and select Delete. Select OK to confirm.
   

From the Announcement Tool:

1. Select the Announcements link at the top of the announcements widget on your course homepage to navigate to the announcements tool.
   
2. The announcements are listed in a table. Select the checkboxes in the first column to choose the announcement(s) you want to delete.
3. Then select Delete above the table.
   

Restoring Deleted Announcements

1. Select the Announcements link at the top of the announcements widget on your course homepage to navigate to the announcements tool.
   
2. Select the More Actions button and then select Restore from the dropdown menu.
   
3. Check the box for each Announcement you wish to restore, then select Restore.

Dismiss Announcements

Select the Announcements link at the top of the announcements widget on your homepage to navigate to the announcements tool.

This will only dismiss the announcement from your view. It will not delete the announcement for others in the course.

Restoring Dismissed Announcements

If you accidentally dismissed an announcement, you can restore it to the announcements widget

1. Select the Announcements link in the announcements widget on your homepage to navigate to the announcements tool.
   
2. Use the Action menu next to the dismissed announcement title and select Restore.
   

Changing Dates

If you just need to change the dates for all the announcements, consider using Manage Dates. In the Manage Dates tool, you are able to edit dates in bulk, instead of one by one.

You can change dates on individual announcements by using the dropdown menu next to the announcement title and selecting Edit. There, you can modify the Start and End Dates as needed.

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Replacement strings in announcements

Replacement strings allow you to insert the user's name into your Announcements so you appear to be addressing each student.

Example:

When Frances Fisher logs into the course site, she sees an announcement with her name included: 

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Learn more

• Announcements: Create and Manage Announcements (System Office knowledge base article)