ANGEL TIP: USING THE COURSE ANNOUNCEMENTS TOOL EFFECTIVELY

The Course Announcements nugget is a common place many instructors use to communicate important information to their students. Do realize, however, that whatever you put in this nugget is also visible on the Personal Home Page (the page you see after logging in to ANGEL but before you select a class) in the My Announcements nugget.

This functionality can be helpful if you have information you want students to see even before they log into your class. However, you should be aware that if you include some kind of formatted content, like a large image or a table, your announcement could affect the appearance of the Personal Home Page for all of your students. If you include something (like an image or a table) that cannot collapse to a smaller width, it will cause the whole column that includes the My Announcements nugget to remain at that width. This causes the other columns to shrink to smaller widths, which can make it difficult for students to locate their courses or read other content.

If you want to make an announcement in your course that does not appear on the Personal Home Page, you can consider using the Course News nugget rather than the Course Announcements nugget.

Thanks to Tracy Newman for sharing this tip.

Reordering Discussions in the Discussion Forums Nugget

You can now change the way Discussions are listed in the Discussion Forums nugget that appears by default on the Communicate tab (and can be added to the Resources page or the Course Home page).

1. Go to the Communicate tab (or wherever your Discussion Forums nugget is located).
2. Mouse over the Discussion Forums nugget and click on the pencil icon.







3. Choose the order you would like to use to display your discussion forums within the Discussion Forums nugget.
   


4. Check the boxes for the other options you want.




5. Click the Save button.