External Links on the Course Homepage

The bookmarks in D2L are generated by students as they opt to bookmark content topics. They are created individually, so each student can decide what to add to their Bookmark widget. Bookmarks cannot be links to outside web pages (though the content topic that they link to can be a quicklink). There are three ways to add a link yourself to the course homepage:

1. Create a News item and include a quicklink in the item's content. If you do not set any calendar restrictions on the item and keep it at the top of your news widget, it will always be visible.
2. Create a custom widget and add to your course homepage.
3. Create a custom navbar link. This has the advantage of always being visible, no matter where students are in your course.

Extra Unread Files in the Dropbox

If a student is dropped from your class and submitted any files that had not been marked "read" to a dropbox folder before the drop, those files will still appear as unread to you and show up on your course home page in the Updates widget as well as the list of unread files for that folder on the dropbox page. When you click on the dropbox name, the default list is by student. Dropped students will not appear on that list, so you will not be able to change the read status of those files on this page. To do that, click on the Files tab to see all of the files uploaded to this folder, including those from dropped students. On this page you can change the read status of a file by clicking on the envelope icon.