How to Add Announcements to Your Course’s Home Page in Canvas

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Communication with your students has never been more important than it is now. With all the changes to how courses are structured and items potentially changing frequently, you want to make sure your students have the most up-to-date information and that it’s easy to find that information.  

We’ve talked before about using Announcements in Canvas. They’re by far the simplest way to communicate with your class – you can easily send a message to all your students that they’ll also receive by email or push notification (depending on how they’ve defined their settings), and the announcement also lives inside Canvas.  

But we can take this one step further and make sure the announcement is seen inside Canvas by adding a feed of recent announcements to the top of your home page. Students will then log into Canvas and click on their course and see reminders of the recent message(s) you sent first thing. And don’t worry – the entire message isn’t published there. Students will see the announcement title (which is a link to the announcement itself) and a note about when that announcement was published.  

Without further ado, here’s how to get this set up in your course.  

1. In your course menu, click “Settings” 
2. Scroll to the bottom of the Course Details page. Right below the “Description” box, click the “more options” link.  
3. Check the box for “Show recent announcements on Course home page.” Use the drop-down menu below that item to select how many announcements you want visible. Canvas will allow up to 15 announcements, but I recommend up to 3 announcements.  
4. Click the “Update Course Details” button.  

Now, if you return to your course’s home page, you’ll see the announcement(s) present at the top of the page.  

If you have questions about this feature, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment or email us at ctl@cedarville.edu.  

Want to never miss a post? Subscribe here!