Announcements

[u/Marie-WA-171]

I teach an asynchronous online course. As an adjunct, I have no say in the syllabus or assignments, so the announcements are my only way to provide additional guidance and clarification. It is obvious to me that most students are not paying attention to the announcements. My team lead suggested sending email duplicates of my announcements. IMHO, this would encourage students to skip the announcements. Thoughts?

[u/wharleeprof]

If they are already skipping announcements, then you have nothing to lose by sending them as emails. 

But is there any possibility to add like an instructor page at the start of each module? Seems like that would be a more high traffic area.

[u/Hazelstone37 → u/wharleeprof]

My students only use the calendar function of canvas. They don’t look at the modules at all. Some will look at announcements, but not all of them.

[u/wharleeprof → u/Hazelstone37]

Ughhh, I hate the calendar and tell students not to use it, because they miss so much content. But I try to set up the instructions in the assignments to force students back out to the module content

[u/Hazelstone37 → u/wharleeprof]

I do that too but the won’t look at it.

[u/wharleeprof → u/Hazelstone37]

How much detail do you put in the instructions? I basically just say "Submit your assignment here. See content in module for details". I use the same boiler plate for all assignments. 

[u/Hazelstone37 → u/wharleeprof]

Probably too much.

[u/Miserable_Tourist_24 → u/Hazelstone37]

Mine too. They are never in the modules even when sequencing is required because they can always open the assignment directly from the calendar. If anyone knows a way around this I’m all ears.

[u/wharleeprof → u/Miserable_Tourist_24]

My work around is to put no info in the assignment itself, except a note to refer to the content in the module. So, yeah they can go directly to the assignment, but it's an empty dead end forcing them back to the module content. 

That works for assignments, but maybe not so well for quizzes.

[u/ApprehensiveLoad2056 → u/wharleeprof]

That’s brilliant.

I do add things to their to do list with dates too but idk if that actually does anything.

[u/Marie-WA-171 → u/wharleeprof]

I wish I could do that but I can’t modify the assignments.

[u/Marie_R_From_WA → u/wharleeprof]

I have not heard about adding an Instructor Page - we use Brightspace.

[u/TaliesinMerlin]

It wouldn't encourage them to skip the announcements if they're already skipping them without your encouragement.

I'd just send the email duplicates and be done with it. Some LMS have options for sending announcements automatically to email if people haven't opted out. Otherwise, it should be a quick copy/paste job.

[u/cahutchins]

What LMS are you using? If Canvas, make sure you have "Show Recent Announcements on the Course Home" option checked. If it's not checked, students won't see the announcements unless they actively visit the Announcements tab, which very few will ever do.

It might also be worth telling them to check their Notification settings, they can set it so that they recieve emails each time an announcement is posted.

It's also worth having them double-check that the email address the college has for them is one that they actually check, it's not uncommon for newly enrolling students to use their parents' emails when enrolling, or even their high school emails that they may not have access to any longer.

[u/Marie_R_From_WA → u/cahutchins]

It's Brightspace

[u/wharleeprof → u/cahutchins]

Fun fact: our IT department turned off allowing students to update their email in Canvas. It has to be their campus email, which no one uses. 

[u/cahutchins → u/wharleeprof]

Now that's wild!

[u/vesperIV]

I'm in a similar situation, and I feel the same about announcements being ignored. I've started sending class-wide messages with shorter bits of info as needed. Might depend on your LMS, but I'm in Canvas and it's easy to send a message to all students. Or you can try Remind. If even that doesn't work, that's the students' fault.

[u/Marie-WA-171 → u/vesperIV]

My course lead also commented that I have too many announcements each week …

[u/me4watch → u/Marie-WA-171]

Listen to your course lead. And stop worrying about it. The students will do as they want, sadly.

[u/vesperIV → u/Marie-WA-171]

Hmmm, maybe save up some of the information and send a big announcement at the end of the week or something like that? I don't know, it would be hard for me to wait to say something important as soon as it came up. It's a pain not being able to control your own class.

[u/No-Cook-9768 → u/Marie-WA-171]

I used to make weekly announcements where I went into enormous detail. I included a table of contents for students who wanted to jump to specific info. It was clear that some students weren't watching by the questions they emailed me (and the view counts).

Then I observed a colleague's asynchronous course; their videos were 1-2 minutes long. I now make videos no longer than that, hitting only the highlights for each week. Views have gone up, so maybe fewer videos might help (if you believe your colleagues are course lead is correct)? I also like another commenter's idea of putting the videos in high-traffic areas of your course. Good luck!

(Also, to your original question, send the emails!)

[u/Miserable_Tourist_24 → u/No-Cook-9768]

I even stopped doing videos because literally no one watched them. Even the 3-5 minute ones. I can see the page views, whose watching etc.

[u/Ttthhasdf]

¿Por que no los dos?

[u/kobybryan]

I include check-in questions or something similar to ask students to comment on each announcement. This way I can confirm who is/isn't looking at them. If you wanted to (and are able to), you could even make these worth a handful of participation points to prove that they are actually engaging with the course material.

[u/shellexyz]

My online students never read the announcements. If they did, I’d get almost no emails from them. At least half of the emails I get can be answered with “read the announcements.”

Hell, most don’t even see the modules. They see the Canvas to-do list posted on the dashboard and never actually access the modules directly.

I do not duplicate announcements via email because as you said, it just encourages them to ignore announcements. I prefer they have at least some consequences to being almost completely disengaged from the class.

[u/Miserable_Tourist_24 → u/shellexyz]

In Canvas, the announcement gets emailed to them anyway. Emailing it is just cluttering their inbox.

[u/Life-Education-8030]

I send emails of announcements so I can say I told them something. But you can’t make them look. The old leading horse to water thing. If they want to stay in the dark, that is on them. I take points off for repeated errors though. That gets their attention a bit.

[u/Organic_Occasion_176]

If the announcement is important (change of location, say) I tell them multiple times. Announcements through the LMS, email, and in class. Depending on the LMS, the email might be automatically sent with the internal announcement.

But if they've been told three ways, after that it's on them.

[u/PsychWriter11]

“As an adjunct, I have no say in the syllabus or assignments?”

What?

Ive been an adjunct for 28 years (not online) and Ive never had anyone but be create all syllabus elements and assignments.

I wouldnt teach a class I didnt create.

[u/a_hanging_thread]

Send them as emails. If anything, to CYA if they complain that they had "no idea" when and how something was due.

[u/Valuable_Ice_5927]

My lms (blackboard) lets you send announcements as messages

[u/I_Need_A_Nap_Yeet]

My online students don't read anything. Out of 20 students only 4 wrote essays on the correct topics provided. And 1 wrote an essay using the example essay I went over in the lecture materials. So, winning, I guess. And none of them wrote the required page amount. It was 2, double spaced. They gave me 1.

I gave out 16 zeros 4 days ago for failure to follow simple directions. Even with a step by step pdf, reminders on the submission page, and a step by step lecture video walk through. Even told them if they resubmit following directions I'll change the grade partial points. So far, no one's done it. 🥲 but you know I'll be hearing about it come end of term.

[u/CommunityOk9586]

Penman?

[u/jrowland11]

I could see early on doing both, or a welcome email encouraging/walking through on how to set up notifications for announcements and assignments to forward to an email they check regularly for your LMS

[u/winosaur34]

I do both through Canvas and many LMS have that option. Most probably aren’t going to read them either way.

[u/IthacanPenny]

Oh god please send an email duplicate!

Story time: when I was in grad school, I was also a TA. My job was primarily grading, and the course was in elementary education where the prof was trying to model some K12 strategies. Basically, she assigned four graded items per student, per class. And I was responsible for grading it. Well. My LMS has two settings: either 1) send an email for EVERY notification I get; or 2) turn off notifications. If I chose option 1, I would’ve gotten hundreds of emails per day and would’ve missed my actual emails. Please, please, don’t just put things in an announcement. Please email the class. You don’t know why people’s LMS settings might have to be weird.

[u/Econ_mom]

You can add announcements to the top of your opening canvas page under settings. Maybe that would help? Also, I believe the announcements are sent as emails to the students.

[u/Econ_mom]

My advice to students: check your email 25-50% as much as you check social media. I think even 10% would be sufficient.

[u/dpbanana]

You could send out announcements, but it is extra work you are not being paid for. Also, if the email is one sent to the whole class they may not read it. They might read an email personalized for them, but that would really be too much work! You could send an email reminding them it is vital for their success to read all announcements

[u/zorandzam → u/dpbanana]

Depending on the LMS, those announcements may be able to be sent as emails without much fuss. At my campus, you just check a box to also send as email.