Any online teaching medium will have some type of ANNOUNCEMENT feature. I've established a few rules about posting announcements. First, I never have more than 5 announcements viewable at any time. Once you produce a grocery list of announcements - the students tune out - and information that you felt was important is simply unread. Typically, these are the only types of announcements that I will post, (A) when graded assignments have been returned, (B) when course grades have been updated - and I also direct students to review their grades for accuracy, (C) if the instructor will be gone for 1-2 days -- and the way that students can contact me in an emergency. I recall one time when I went on a 2 day vacation and my students went into panic mode as I wasn't posting the classroom! (D) make students aware of learning team rosters, and (E) to note any correction of an error in the syllabus or global problem with the online classroom. Attached is a screen shot of the ANNOUNCEMENTS page from my current course (I also like to use different colored text for each announcement). Oh, one more thing - make sure to program your Announcements to sunset (if you have a medium such as Blackboard) - if not, be sure to review your announcements weekly and cull any that are no longer relevant. I'm not a fan of the "permanent" announcement - if you want to make your confidentiality post permanent - then put it up for 5 days, give it a 3 day rest, and then bring it back so it's fresh.
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