About Announcements

Use the Announcements tool to read instructor messages, course information, and other updates.

Items appear in the Announcements widget, but you can also receive instant notifications about postings through email, SMS, and RSS feeds. See Cobra Learning - Setting your notifications to learn about creating instant notifications for news and announcements.

The Announcements tool enables you to create news items that help communicate course updates, changes, and new information to your users quickly and effectively. Since My Home or Course Home is the first page that users often see when they log in or access their courses, the Announcement widget is a good area for displaying important information.

Access the Announcement tool

Do one of the following:

• Click Announcements on the navbar (if the link is present)
• Click Announcements in the header of the widget.
• Click Course Admin on the navbar, then click Announcements.

Creating an announcement

Create an announcement

1. Do one of the following:
   • Click New News Item from the Announcement widget menu.
   • On the Announcements page, click New Item.
2. Enter the news headline in the Headline field.
3. Enter the news content in the Content field.
4. If you want to hide your headline's date and time, clear Always show start date. By default, an item's start date and time appears below its headline when displayed in the Announcements widget.
5. Select the posting availability date in the Start Date and End Date drop-down lists or by clicking their Select Date icons. Announcements publish immediately unless you specify an alternate start date from the Start Date drop-down list.
6. You can remove an item on a specific date by selecting the check box Remove news item based on end date. You and administrators can still see the item after its end date, but it will not appear in the widget.
7. You can include attachments, audio recordings, and video recording as part of your item:
   • To add an attachment, click Add a File in the Attachments section.
   • To record audio, click Record Audio in the Attachments section. Click Flash Settings to make adjustments to your microphone selection and volume. Click Play to listen to your recording. Click Clear to erase your recording.
8. Click Attach Existing or Create and Attach to include additional release conditions. See Cobra Learning - Release Conditions to learn about creating and setting up release conditions.
9. Click Save as Draft to continue editing the item (students cannot see draft news items), or click Publish to release the item to users.

Creating an announcement for a future date

If you set a news item's start date for the future, the posting is not visible to users until that date.

Example  If you want an item to appear on Monday morning, specify a start date of Monday at 9:00am.

Note  Post-dated news items do not display in the Announcements widget even if users have permission to see future news items. They can be found within the list of items on the Announcements page.

Managing announcements

Table of contents

1. Edit a news item
2. Reorder news items
3. Dismiss a news item
4. Restore a dismissed news item
5. Delete a news item

Edit an item

1. On the Announcements page, click on the item you want to edit.
2. Edit your posting.
3. You can select the Major edit - send a notification and restore it for those who dismissed it check box to inform users of major changes and updates to postings they might have dismissed, ensuring those headlines reappear with current information.

   Note   You can also make the edited posting reappear at the top of the Announcements widget by changing its Start Date to the current date and time.

4. Click Update.

Reorder items

1. Do one of the following:
   • On the Announcements page, click Reorder from the More Actions button.
   • Click Reorder Announcements from the widget menu.
2. Use the drop-down lists in the Sort Order column to select an item's order. Other items automatically reposition themselves according to the new order.
3. Click Save.

Dismiss an item

Do one of the following:

• Click the Dismiss icon for the news item you want to hide in the Announcements widget.
• On the Announcements page, click Dismiss from the context menu of item you want to dismiss.

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Restore a dismissed item

On the Announcements page, click Restore from the context menu of the item you want to restore.

Note  You can click Go to News tool from the Announcements widget menu to view all items on the Announcements page.

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Delete an item

Do one of the following:

• Click Delete from the context menu of the item you want to delete.
• Delete multiple postings by selecting the check boxes beside the items you want to delete, and clicking Delete at the top of the list.

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Subscribing to News' RSS feed

You can subscribe to an RSS feed and receive daily updates of all announcements in an RSS reader. This allows you to access an aggregate of items without logging into the Learning Environment.

Subscribe to an RSS feed

1. Do one of the following:
   • On the Announcements page, click RSS from the More Actions button.
   • Click RSS from the Announcements widget menu.
2. Click Subscribe to this feed.
3. Click Subscribe.

Note The RSS subscription may function differently on different browsers. We have found Mozilla Firefox to be the most consistent in subscribing to RSS feeds.

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