d2l regional events 2014 - building custom widgets in brightspace
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Regional User Forum
Ontario!
Building Custom Widgets to Enhance Your Home Pages
Barry DahlSr. Community Manager, D2L
Widget-based Home Pages
• Before you begin setting up your course home page, consider the needs of your students:– What information is most relevant to them as
students in your course? – What course materials and supplementary
materials will they need?– How can you maximize your course home page
to include relevant information?
Widget-based Home Pages
• At-a-glance, what do you want students to see?– Course news and updates– Important dates and reminders– Links to course content– Links to supplementary materials– Relevant RSS feeds
“Traditional” Home Page w/News & System Widgets
V10 Widget Layout Options• Suggestions:
– Maximize the use of screen space
– Don’t repeat things in widgets and nav bars
– Encourage your students to enter course through home page, as much as possible
8 Layout Choices
Two Equal Widget Columns
Large Column on Left
Three Column Layout
Three Contest Entries
Three Embedded Polls
Replace strings
Community Posts about Widgets
• Go to the new Brightspace Community
–community.brightspace.com
• Go to the Teaching & Learning Community
• Go to the T & L Wiki
• Go to “Widget Central”
Laura Gibbs – Oklahoma University
Some Problems with Widgets
• Mixed content blocking in most browsers– Check out the Firefox extension
• Lack of “https:” embed code for widgets• Widget-building sites come and go:
– Google Gadgets– WidgetBox
Full Custom Home Pages
• Any webpage/site can be used as a custom home page in D2L.
• Examples:– Course blog– RSS aggregator– Any course-specific web page
Custom Page Example
Let’s look at some examples
• Go to the Learning Environment for the D2L Regional events– community.desire2learn.com/login
• Use Course Search to find “Barry’s RUF Sessions”