Quick Tip: Create MAGIC - Part 2 (Announcements)
The Regional Campus Instructional Design team is continuing our 5-week series on communication and MAGIC is our acronym that will help you engage and connect with your students.
As a reminder from last week, MAGIC stands for the following:
- Message Students Who
- Announcements
- Grade comments
- Inbox
- Comments Library
Announcements
This week is brought to you by the letter A!
Announcements can be used for more than just reminding students of an upcoming event. Start by clicking +Announcement in the top right corner of the Announcement page. The page that opens is like a MS Word Document. The options on this page allow you to format text but also allow you to add links, images, and video to your messages. The cloud allows you to add HTML code. You can easily embed the code from your favorite polling software using this code.
Here is an example of how to keep things on the lighter side but keeping your course on the minds of your students. Showing that you are human and enjoy teaching them helps keep students engaged. We would be happy to help you add these tools.
Moving down the page shows more options that can create a social media or discussion board feel. You can ask for feedback on current events, silly items, or just have the student “like” that they have completed something. These activities will all add interest and interaction to your course. The delay posting option allows you to pre-write an announcement and release it to student at a designated time.
The last wonderful thing about announcements is when you post an announcement it also sends an email to the students*, and you can opt to show your most recent announcements on the home page.
*Please note that students can turn this off.