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Guide to Building the Newsletter

Each week (mostly), we will share a list of mostly jobs and internships with students. At times, there will also be a list of events or engagement opportunities (think volunteering or joining a student organization board) included. Sway is a Microsoft office product we have free access to use. It is built for simplified presentations and newsletters and can be embedded into Canvas. Due to the clean layout and easy use, this is how we share our weekly digest. You can learn more about Sway on LinkedIn Learning.

Starting a new newsletter:

  • Visit sway.office.com
  • Make sure you are under “edited” on “My Sways”
  • Duplicate the last newsletter to edit. We want to be sure people have continued access to previous newsletters.
  • Access the new newsletter and edit the “Published” date to the date that the newsletter will post to Canvas. Currently, these are posted every Friday.

General settings information:

  • Possible sections and permanent sections (bold and italic are always in the newsletter and rarely edited). You can add and remove sections as we have information to share in them.
    • Upcoming Events
      • These will come from the FSPHCS google calendar. I typically only post events coming up in the next week or a registration deadline students need to know for a future event.
    • Get Involved
    • Practice Safe Searching
    • Internships & Fellowships
    • Job Opportunities
    • Searching Tools & Ongoing Opportunities
  • At times, there may be information to share that doesn’t comfortably fit in any section. You are welcome to propose ideas about how to add this information or we can chat about how to best post that information.
  • Section headers use “heading 1”
  • Titles for opportunities/events use “heading 2”
    • How to find “heading 2”
      • Click “+”
      • Select the “text” menu
      • Click “heading 2”
  • Information about the opportunity or event should be in a “text” section

Tips for preparing the newsletter:

  1. Check for events and deadlines that have passed since the last newsletter: Start by looking for dates that have passed (events and application deadlines). Delete these by selecting the box of information (header and text) then clicking the delete icon. You can also delete these pieces one at a time.
  2. Check postings that do not have application deadlines: For opportunities without a application deadline, you will need to check the links to ensure the opportunity is still available. If it links to a word document or something that they will not close on their own, I generally keep them for maybe a month or two and then remove it.
  3. Order of new posts: As you add opportunities, post the newer ones closer to the top of the section to help people locate recent additions to the newsletter (e.g. a new job posting will be listed closer to the “Job Opportunities” header than one that was added a week ago). We keep the old ones in case students are not checking the newsletter every week and can still see what is available from older newsletters.
  4. Add a new opportunity: Find where you want to post the opportunity and click the “+” icon underneath the opportunity would like to featured before what you are posting (e.g. click the “+” icon underneath the section header to post a new opportunity to that section).
  5. Linking website information: Many posts will link back to a website. Include that link in the posting along with a deadline if provided. Check the post for a brief description of the opportunity to paste into the newsletter.
  6. Posting opportunities that provide only attached documents: When sent an attachment to share, first add that document to the FSPHCS OneDrive under “weekly digest postings.” There are folders for each academic year, so add the post to the appropriate year. Once uploaded, you will need to share the document.
    1. Sharing the document:
      1. Click the icon showing a box with an arrow or the three dots and then “Share”
      2. Click the settings icon that looks like a cog
      3. Select “anyone” from the menu
      4. Change “can edit” to “can view”
      5. Click “Apply”
      6. Click “copy link”
      7. Add this link to the newsletter – this link will be a jumbled mess, so I usually write “Learn more here” or “Learn more and apply here” and hyperlink that language.
  7. Posting events: All events I wish to share with student are posted to this google calendar: Public calendar link. This calendar is embedded in the FSPH Career & Professional Development page. To navigate to the embedded calendar, open the Canvas course and select “upcoming events” from the homepage. When sharing these events in the newsletter, I usually link to the specific event in google. 
    1. Steps to get link to post:
      1. Click on the event posting (double clicking or fully opening not necessary)
      2. Click the vertical three dots at the top of the event
      3. Click “publish event”
      4. Click copy for the second option with the text “Link to event” above the link
      5. Click “close”

Posting newsletter to Canvas:

  1. Start an announcement on the Fairbanks Career & Professional Development Canvas page:
    1. I recommend opening the last announcement to copy over the header information.
      1. To copy all the formatting from a previous announcement, you will need to click “edit” in the upper righthand corner.
      2. Highlight “Tips for Navigating this Newsletter” along with the text and icons below to copy.
      3. Click “Cancel” once you copy that text and follow the rest of the instructions for setting up your announcement.
    2. Click “announcements”
    3. Click “+Announcement”
    4. Make the topic title “This Week’s Digest”
    5. Paste the copied text into the body of this announcement
    6. You still need to embed the newsletter, but I recommend clicking “delay posting” at this time and enter the date and time you would like the newsletter to post to Canvas, then click “publish.” You can come back and edit up through that posting time.
  2. Go to the Sway site:
    1. Open the newsletter you will share.
    2. Click the three horizontal dots.
    3. Select “settings for this sway.”
    4. Uncheck “viewers and co-authors can duplicate this sway.”
    5. Uncheck “show sway informational footer.”
    6. Click “share” in the upper righthand corner.
    7. Select “anyone with a link”
    8. Confirm that “view” is selected.
    9. Click “</> get embed code,”
    10. A new window will open. Click “copy of clipboard.”
  3. Go back to the Canvas:
    1. Make sure your cursor is at the bottom of the text already in the announcement and aligned at the center. This is where the newsletter will appear.
    2. Click the three vertical dots on the right side of the tool bar above your announcement text box.
    3. A new line of editing options will appear. Select the one that look like a cloud with “<>” centered in the cloud.
    4. Paste the embed code in the text box that appears.
    5. Before clicking “submit” edit the width to “950px” and height to “700px”. This creates a larger visual space and allows the newsletter to format a little nicer.
    6. Click “submit”
    7. Click “publish” to finish your post. Keep the delay posting activated for whenever you want it to actually go live. The perk of using sway is we can continue editing the newsletter after the post is created and even launched without causing issues to the announcement posting. You can continue to edit the newsletter if needed or you are done and it is ready for sharing.

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FSPH Career & Professional Development Copyright © by kschuste. All Rights Reserved.

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