Introduction:
Enhance engagement by scheduling announcements for consistent and regular communication with all students enrolled in a course. Students can adjust their notification preferences to stay informed about important updates. The Announcements widget can help streamline this process and ensure frequent communication reaches your audience.
Important Notes:
- It is recommended to only have three to five announcements, depending on how much you have in the content of each announcement. Students will tend to ignore or glaze over the announcements if you have too many of them visible on the Course Home.
- It’s best to set an End Date for announcements that you would like to keep them for future class or to organize the announcements as needed to show on the Course Home.
- The Announcements tool is available from your course homepage, and it triggers an email for students when an announcement is created or updated. Students can also see announcement notifications in the course Update Alerts inside D2L Brightspace.
Create an Announcement with Replacement Strings
You can use a replace strings and add it to the text field or HTML editor area inside D2L of the Announcements tool (like in the Headline or Content). Then later when someone views your Announcement, D2L will replace the strings with the appropriate information about that viewer.
- Replace string: {FirstName} will display the viewer’s first name
- Replace string: {LastName} will display the viewer’s last name
- Replace string: {UserName} will display the viewer’s username in D2l
- Replace string: {ExternalEmail} will display the viewer’s email address
- Replace string: {RoleName} will display the viewer’s role in your course
For example: In the Headline, we add {RoleName} and in the Content, we add {FirstName}
When a student views this announcement, the Headline will show Student and the Content will show the student’s first name.
Additional Resources: