How can I change the U on an announcement I imported?

[marshall_angela]

Each semester I import announcements from a previous course into my new one.  The U for unknown or unidentified is in place of my profile picture.  I created the announcement in my previous class and I'm importing it to a new class. 

Is there a way for my profile pic to show instead of the U?  I've tried editing the imported announcement, but it still has a U.

I feel like announcements with my picture are more personable and makes it more likely that students will read.  

Any suggestions?

[NoahBoswell · Accepted solution]

Hi @marshall_angela ,

Thank you for posting on the Instructure Community!

The short answer is no, you cannot change the profile picture from the U when importing an announcement from a different course into a new course. The only solution around this would be to repost the announcement under your current course in order for your name and picture to appear correctly.

Reach out with any additional questions or concerns, I hope this helps!

Best,
Noah

[marshall_angela]

Thanks, Noah!

By "repost" do you mean create a NEW announcement?  Because that is what I've been doing for years.  It's a time-consuming part of setting up my class, which is why I'm trying to find a solution.

If you mean "repost" like repost as I would on social media, I don't know how to do that with a Canvas announcement.

[NoahBoswell]

Hi @marshall_angela ,

Absolutely! Yes, I do mean creating a new Canvas Announcement. The best way to go about this would to be just copying and pasting everything over to the new announcement in the new course. While at times it can be time consuming, this is one of the best ways to get this done.

The reason why the U pops up when you add announcements to a new course that were imported from an old course is because several courses that people use can come from other people (instructors) that may not be from outside your school district or organization. That being said, to maintain confidentiality and other things like that, Canvas automatically puts the U in the profile picture for everyone.

Would it maybe be easier for you to take some time to just copy and paste those announcements into your course one by one, and then just schedule them for publication whenever you want them to go out? I feel that dedicating some time into doing this would be a good thing to do, then you can get it all done and out of the way and not worry about making them all at different times.

I'm sorry that there's really no other simpler way to do this, but I hope I am helping in some way! I've been in similar situations before myself with importing some of my courses, and this has been the best solution for me.

Best,
Noah 

[Jeff_F]

Hello @marshall_angela - I agree: having the image and name associated with the announcements is important. And so I too manually recreate my announcements each term instead of copying them over. This approach helps me review and improve the content, and also allows me to find and fix any link issues. Using multiple monitors makes the process streamlined, as I simply copy the HTML and paste it into a new announcement for my upcoming course.

Another reason for manually copying them is that I read if announcements are copied from a previous term and set to 'delay post', students do not receive email notifications when they are published. I believe this happens because the copied announcement is not linked to my account, preventing the notification system from sending messages.

[dbrace]

As a Canvas admin and primary tech support person for online courses at my institution, I personally find reusing announcements to be less personal.

I have found that instructors using the same canned/generic announcements each semester are making assumptions that students in one section/semester will behave the same way another section/semester did. If students are behaving the same way, that is either a good sign because they are listening or a bad sign because the course may not be designed (or communicated) as well as it could.

Does reusing announcements save time? Yes, but students can tell even when well-crafted well-worded announcements are posted.

Just my two cents.

-Doug

P.S. If you would like to propose this for development/enhancement by Instructure, you will need to submit this as an idea and I would encourage you to head over to Canvas Ideas. You can refer to https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructure-Community-Guide/tkb-p/community#Ideas for more information about the process.

You may also want to review It’s Time for Your Feedback on the Future of Ideas & Themes (2024-10-18) and Thank You for Your Feedback on Ideas and Themes (2024-11-21) for information about how the Ideas / Themes process will be changing in the future.

[marshall_angela]

Doug, thanks for sharing.  I keep a few announcements at the top of the home page for the entire semester.  They are used as a quick reference for navigating Canvas, as well as additional resources that are specific to assignments in the class.  I want students to be able to easily access that information from start to finish in the course.  The announcements that I'm trying to bring over are not canned or generic.  They are actually specific to each class. 

Since I teach the same classes every semester, the resources for assignments will be the same.  That's why I'm trying to save time by using announcements from the previous semester.

In order to encourage students to see information for my classes, I update the front page every week so they don't miss anything.  The weekly "announcement" that I add to the front page is not generic either.  It is timely and relevant to the needs of each individual class. 

[dbrace]

Thank you for those additional details, @marshall_angela.

When it comes to course design, sometimes, there are a variety of possibilities depending on what is trying to be accomplished and I have a better understanding of what you have been doing and why.

In my opinion and based on what you have described, I would recommend using Canvas pages for those references/resources instead of announcements because either (a) the pages could be added as items within a module (possibly within a "Start Here" module or a "References/Resources" module) or (b) the pages could be linked to from within an assignment and (c) in announcements that you post, you could also link to the pages.

-Doug