EdTech Tips
Brightspace Communication Tips
Brightspace allows you to communicate with your students using various tools. Consider the following tips for best practices with Brightspace’s communication tools.
Copying Announcements
Copying Announcements Between Courses
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The Announcements tool enables you to create announcements that communicate with your users quickly and effectively. For information about creating new announcements, visit the Brightspace Instructor Help Page.
Instructors frequently run into difficulties when they copy their course from a previous semester to the current one. It is important to note that, if you have selected Copy All Components during the Import process, the Announcements from the previous semester are copied as well.
Often all these Announcements will be active and visible to students. This is because, when the Announcement was created, No End Date was set up. To make them inactive, you must set an end date for each Announcement. If you do not have a specific end date for the Announcement, you can add the end of the semester as the end date. That way, when the course is copied over the next term, the announcement remains inactive, and you can change the start date and end date and reuse them whenever you want.
Did you know?
When you copy from an existing course, it may be better practice to copy less than you need, especially things with dates. Instead of using “Copy All Components”, select “Copy Selected Components” and choose what is useful going forward.
Use Announcements to communicate essential information to your learners. Keep in mind, information from last semester is no longer essential and copied Announcements will be confusing.
Want to learn more about the Announcements tool? Visit the Brightspace Instructor Help article about Announcements.
