Basics: Blackboard Announcements Best Practices

Announcements is a tool in Blackboard for posting quick, timely messages with an email option built in.

Welcome your students to the first day of class. Inform them of upcoming due dates and tests. Let them know you will be out for the day. Mention any changes to the course schedule. Congratulate the class on a successful semester.

Announcements should not contain course materials. PowerPoints, forms, documents, detailed directions, and other materials belong in a content area like Our Classroom.

If an Announcement pertains to multiple sections, caution must be taken if you plan to copy and paste.

Don’t do a “screen scrape.” A screen scrape is highlighting and copying the text from the webpage and pasting it into the text box editor of another section. This can cause technical problems in Blackboard and produce Announcements that work in one course section but not another if the Announcement contains course links, graphics, or documents. Links and documents are unique to the section they are created in or uploaded to. Students in one course section do not have the necessary permissions to view materials in other course sections.

A good strategy for using the same Announcement in multiple course sections is to prewrite the message in Notepad or a similar text application. Copying and pasting from a text file reduces the chance of inserting conflicting code and broken links. If you must use course links or graphics, they must be created in each course section’s Announcements.

Announcements do copy over in a full course copy. When that occurs, the viewing permissions transfer to the destination course and apply to it. Copies of files, like documents or graphics, are included in the course files.

It is advised to keep your Announcements simple and short and free of extraneous materials.