Class Announcements and Course & Group Messages in Schoology

@joe_edtech/@LisaBerghoff

One of the questions we always have to deal with at the beginning of the year is, "What's the best way to create an email list for my students?" Well, next year when we all use Schoology, we won't need to ask that question anymore. Messaging your entire class is built into to program itself. 

Schoology provides two different levels of classroom messaging. First, "Class Announcements" are important enough to appear on the student home page in the "Recent Activity Stream" and on every page of the course. Course and Group Updates appear in both the "Recent Activity Stream" and on the "Update" page of your course, or home page of your group.

Let's start with Updates. They are simple. Simply navigate to your course, click on the Update link, and post a message:

The Update will appear at the top of the list of classroom or group updates. It will also appear on the student home page. If you've joined any groups or have been a part of any classes, you also know that you will also receive new updates in your email. (Yes, text message and social media updates are available as well.)

If you want to raise the stakes on a classroom update, you can make it a Class Announcement. That marks the message as important and makes it a little more visible for students. To do this, click the icon that looks like a thought bubble with a plus sign in it before you click Post. 

You'll see a drop down with three choices in it. The last one is a bell. If you click that, it will change the Update to an Announcement. Then the announcement will appear at the top of each class page until you remove it:

When you are ready, simply click the "x Remove" link that appears under your Class Announcement.

Here's a short video that runs through this process:

Course Announcements from Schoology on Vimeo.