Use the announcements forum
The Announcements forum is a specialised forum for unit-level announcements. Only lecturers and tutors can write or reply to posts in this forum. All unit participants including staff and students automatically receive email notifications (forced subscription). The Announcements forum is found on the Forums tab. The content is also pushed to the Forums block on the Unit Dashboard tab.
Suggestions on how to use this tool:
- Keep the Announcements forum for urgent/important announcements so students don't get swamped with emails.
- Use the groupings tool to enable sending specific messages to previously set groups.
Post to the Announcements forum
- Click on the Announcements forum then click Add discussion topic.
- Type in the subject and your text.
- Check Send forum post notifications with no editing-time delay if you want to post to the mail queue immediately, allowing you to edit the message before it is added to the mail queue.
- Check Pinned if you would like to pin your announcement to the top of the forum.
- When you are ready to post, click Post to forum.
- If you have added the Latest announcements block, the subject line of the new post will appear in the block once the post is processed.
The Announcements forum, previously called the News forum (Units prior to Semester 1, 2017 may still be labelled News forum), is a specialised forum for announcements. Only lecturers and tutors can write or reply to posts, all participants including staff, students and discontinued students automatically receive email notifications (forced subscription). The Latest announcements block (optional) provides a highly visible link to the Announcements forum.
If your unit doesn't have an Announcements or News forum, or you have accidentally deleted it, please contact your Moodle Faculty Administrator.
Suggestions on how to use this tool:
- Keep the Announcements forum for urgent/important announcements so students don't get swamped with emails.
- Use the groupings tool to enable sending specific messages to previously set groups.
Latest announcements block
- In the Unit banner, click Turn editing on.
- Open the Nav Drawer and scroll down to click on the Add a Block button.
- Select Latest announcements from the Add a block list.
- The Latest announcements block will display on the right hand side of your unit homepage.
- To adjust the number of announcements displayed in the block:
- From your unit homepage, click on the Unit administration cog and select Edit settings.
- In the Appearance section, select the number of announcements to be displayed from the Number of announcements drop down list. By default this value is set to five.
- Scroll down and click Save changes.
- Once you have made at least one post in the Announcements forum, it will be displayed in the Latest announcements block.
Post to the Announcements forum
- Click on the Announcements forum then click Add new topic or click Add a new topic... in the Latest announcements block.
- Type in the subject and your text.
- Check Send forum post notifications with no editing-time delay if you want to post to the mail queue immediately, otherwise it will be added in 30 minutes, allowing you to edit the message before it is added to the mail queue.
- Check Pinned if you would like to pin your announcement to the top of the forum.
- When you are ready to post, click Post to forum.
- If you have added the Latest announcements block, the subject line of the new post will appear in the block once the post is processed.