Question of the Week

This Week's Faculty Question

Q:   I'm not quite ready to publish my course yet, but I'd like to send my students an announcement to welcome them to my course and to share some links with them. Will they see the announcement if I post it before I publish the course?

A:   Yes and no! The announcement will be posted inside your course and students will be able to see it there after you publish the course. However, they will not receive a notification about it because the announcement was posted while the course was unpublished. This has been a point of confusion in the past, and for this reason, Canvas recently added a warning message to clarify announcement notification behaviour in unpublished courses.   

Unpublished course warning message for announcements

When creating an Announcement in an unpublished course, the following warning message now displays:

The message explains that notifications are not sent retroactively to students and recommends using the Delay Posting option to post the announcement on a future date (i.e., a date that occurs after the course has been published).

For additional information about announcement posting options, refer to the following Canvas Instructor guides: 

• How do I add an announcement in a course? 
• How do I delay posting an announcement until a specific date in a course?

What can you do if you've already posted an announcement in an unpublished course?

If you've already posted an announcement before publishing your course, you can increase the likelihood that your students will see the announcement after you publish your course, by using the option to show recent announcements on your course Home Page.

Note: Although you can show up to 15 announcements, we recommend no more than 3, to avoid cluttering the home page:

For additional assistance with announcements and other course communication tools, please contact the EdTech Office or book a consultation.