Announcements are an ideal way to post time-sensitive information critical to course success. Add announcements for these types of course activities:
- Due dates for assignments and projects
- Changes to your syllabus
- Corrections/clarifications of materials
- Exam schedules
You can add, edit, and delete announcements from the Announcements page. You can also record video and audio files that you can include with your announcement. Blackboard provides auto-captioning for audio and video files you create to include in announcements. You don't need to turn on this feature.
When you add an announcement, you can also send it as an email to students in your course. Students receive the announcement even if they don't log into your course.
Topics on this page include:
Announcements on the Activity page
Announcements appear in the Today and Recent sections of the activity page.
Most announcements disappear from the Activity page when students view them within their courses. If you schedule an announcement, it appears in the Activity page at the scheduled time.
Announcements inside a course
New course announcements reach students the next time students that they enter your course. Students need to acknowledge the new announcement before they can access course content. After students acknowledge the announcement, it won’t show again. If you post new announcements, students receive only the first announcement
Students receive a course announcement and an Activity page notification about course groups they need to join. If students haven't joined a course group, that alert remains in the activity stream.
Select an announcement to mark it as read. If you don’t select the announcement, you’ll see a number beside the Announcements page that displays the number of unread announcements.
To mark a read announcement as unread, select the announcement again. Read announcements are displayed with a darker color than unread announcements on the Announcements page.
Announcements page
From the Announcements page, you can create, organize, mark as read or unread, and search your announcements. From the Course Content page when you first enter a course, select Announcements to go to the Announcements page.
- View a summary of your announcements. View the number of course announcements by status at the top of the page. Announcements have three statuses: Posted, Scheduled, and Draft.
- Sort columns. Sort announcements by the title, status, or the number of viewers.
- Search announcements. Select the Search button that’s displayed as a magnifying glass and enter keywords to locate a specific announcement.
- Create a new announcement. Select the Create Announcement button that appears as a plus sign to open the New Announcement page.
- Manage announcements. Open an announcement's menu to edit, copy, or delete an announcement.
- Mark as read. Select an announcement to set an announcement to read or unread.
Watch a video about Announcements
The following narrated video provides a visual and auditory representation of some of the information included on this page. For a detailed description of what is portrayed in the video, open the video on YouTube, navigate to More actions, and select Open transcript.
Video: Announcements in Blackboard Ultra Course
Create an announcement
On the Announcements page, select the Create Announcement button that appears as a plus sign to create a new announcement. You can only send an announcement to all members of a course. Use a message if you want to contact a specific student or group.
Enter a title and message for the announcement. Use the options in the message editor to format text, embed multimedia, and attach files.
You can insert audio and video recordings in your course announcements.
You can also send an email copy to all course members, including yourself. Select Send an email copy to recipients. Recipients must have a valid email address in the system. Emails about announcements are always sent and aren't controlled by your institution’s global notification settings.
If you edit an announcement after posting it and select Send email copy to recipients and post it again, the email isn't sent. You’ll need to send a new announcement.
Select Save draft to save your announcement as a draft. If you’re ready to send out the announcement now, select Post.
You can post draft announcements by selecting Post now on the Announcements page.
What do students receive in the email?
In the email, embedded content will be links. Students can select the links to access the content.
Schedule an announcement
You can create an announcement for a future event, such as a reminder about a course event or due date.
- Schedule announcements to post automatically in your course on the date and time you choose.
- Hide announcements when they're no longer relevant.
Select Schedule announcement from the New Announcement page.
When you schedule an announcement, a Show on date and time is required. You can optionally select Hide on and select the date and time.
Use the date picker to schedule announcements.
If you no longer want to schedule the announcement, select Schedule announcement again.
On the Announcements page, the scheduled announcement has a Scheduled label in the Status column.
You have the option to send out an email copy to recipients with a scheduled announcement.
Edit, copy, or delete an announcement
You can edit, copy, or delete any announcement in your course. On the Announcements page, open any announcement's More options menu.
- Select Edit to change the title or message. You can also edit the scheduled time to post and turn the time on and off.
- Select Delete to permanently remove an announcement from your course.
- Select Copy to make an exact copy of an existing announcement and update as needed.
If you edit or copy an existing announcement that has Send email copy to recipients selected, the announcement will return to the draft state and you must send the announcement again.
