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Archiving Class Announcements in WebTycho

CSI Staff

Staff Writer

Center for Support of Instruction

Published: 0 2003

Category: » Webtycho » Announcement-area

Your class announcements are a very important part of the online classroom. You never want to delete them as you and/or your students will often refer back to them throughout the semester. Some instructors already remove their old announcements from the main announcement area and put them elsewhere in the classroom. This is an excellent way of keeping the announcement area organized.

This article will give some reasons and suggestions on how to do this if you wish.

Why would I want to archive my class announcements? What are the benefits?

• Class announcements are the first item that loads in your WebTycho classroom. When your class announcements are large, then this extends the time that your students have to wait to load your class. There is also a built in limit to the amount of characters you can enter into the generic text boxes in WebTycho. Often instructors run into problems midway through the semester that they can no longer type new announcement into this area. Not being able to add an announcement is a common sign that you have reached that limit. When you have reached the limit, your only option to continue adding to this field is to remove something else, like your older announcements.
• Most importantly this will give you a complete record of all of the announcements made to your WebTycho Classroom. If a student tries to dispute that something wasn't mentioned, you will simply be able to point them to the announcement showing what you told the entire class.
  
• Lastly, one of the other benefits of archiving your class announcements elsewhere in WebTycho is that you can import them from class to class and reuse some of the text instead of having to recreate them each semester. You will be able to use the Class Import feature to import these old announcements from an older class to a current one. If you make this item hidden from students using the Faculty Center, you will then be able to copy and paste your class announcements easily only needing to make minor changes.

How do I archive my class announcements?

There are two easy ways to save your class announcements to other places in the classroom.

In the Course Content Area

1. Create a new item in Course Content by going to Faculty Center-->Course Content-->Create Text.
2. Give content item a title such as Archived Announcements, or Older Class Announcements.
3. Copy old announcement from the [Edit This Class Announcement] view and paste into the text box.
   (This is most easily done using two browser windows at once, one open to the edit announcements and one open to create course content.)
4. Click the Submit button. This will bring you back to the Manage Course Content menu.
5. Click on the link for the Announcement to ensure that the announcements are intact . If the announcements look okay, it is safe to remove them from the main Class Announcements area.
6. The next time you need to archive more announcements you can go to the Faculty Center-->Course Content-->Manage Course Content and select the edit button next to the announcement item to add more information. It is best to add more announcements to the top of the text box.

In the Conference Area

1. Create a new Conference by going to your Faculty Center--Conference-->Create.
2. Give the conference item a title such as Archived Announcements, or Older Class Announcements.  You might wish to make it Read Only so that students can not post to this conference.
3. Click the Submit button. This will bring you back to the Manage Course Conference menu.
4. Click on the link for the Announcement then click on Create a Main Topic at bottom of window.
5. Give this new topic a title to reflect the dates of announcements covered and paste in the text of the Class Announcements you wish to archive. (This is most easily done using two browser windows at once, one open to the edit announcements and one open to create main topic window.)
6. Click the Submit button. This will bring you to the conference you just created. Review it to ensure that your announcements appear as you want them to, then remove them from the current Class Announcements area.
7. The next time you need to archive more announcements you can go to the Announcement conference and create a new Main Topic to add in the next installment of announcements to be removed from the main page.

Some Important Notes

When you import these from one class to another, you will want to make them unavailable to your students.  This is easily done by editing the item of Course Content or Conference and setting the Make Link Visible to Students from Yes to No.

Lastly, and perhaps most important of all, is that when you archive your older announcements to another area of the class, you will want to leave a note in the current announcement screen to direct students to the location of the older announcements.