The Announcements (formerly News Forum) is a forum that is automatically created within each course. The default settings force every enrolled person to be subscribed to the News forum. As with any forum, emails can be sent to subscribed members. Even if students do not receive the email of posts made here, the messages are archived in the News forum and can be viewed by all class participants.
It is important to note that only teachers may create posts in this particular forum. Students cannot reply to posts made here nor start original threads. Teachers should consider this forum as a "one-way megaphone" to push announcements to all enrolled students. This forum was renamed in the later versions of AsULearn, so if you import or restore an older course, you'll see "News Forum." If you use a newly-created course, you'll see "Announcements" -- but they are exactly the same thing.
Step-by-step guide
Create a post
- Click the Announcements link on the main course page.
- Click the Add a new topic button.
- Enter a Subject and a Message. The content of your post will be emailed to all course participants approximately 15 minutes after you click the Post to forum button. TIP: Clicked the Advanced link at the bottom of the editor if you wish to set a display time on your post, or if you wish to send it with no editing-time delay. If you check the Send forum post notifications with no editing-time delay box on the Advanced editor, it will be sent in approximately 5 minutes.
Note: Announcement Forum emails are not sent to students when the course is hidden. If you wish to email all students in a hidden course, consider using the Quickmail tool. See more details on the Email Students in Your Class support page.