[Announcements] Announcements triggered or timed based on release of content in Canvas

[sam_brancatisan]

Problem statement:

We currently manually schedule announcements to be sent to students based on the schedule of a course. For example, on the day when Module 2 of the course is unlocked in Canvas, we create an announcement to participants saying 'Module 2 is available, please start your learning' and delay posting until the date we have set Module 2 to unlock. This is very manual in courses with multiple cohorts running on different schedules, or where using course pacing. It's also currently not possible to trigger announcements based on when students complete learning activities asynchronously.

Proposed solution:

We would like to be able to have announcements triggered by other dates or actions in Canvas, rather than setting them manually. Ideally this would also update automatically based on magical distribution of dates when using course pacing. For example, on whatever day Module 2 is unlocked, a corresponding announcement is triggered. Better still, announcements could be timed based on when students do things. This would allow better support for asynchronous learning. For example, 2 days after a student watches a particular video in Canvas, an announcement would be automatically triggered to remind them to review their understanding with a follow-up quiz.

User role(s):

admin,instructor,ta,designer

[AlexisNast]

This idea has been added to a theme for consideration.