Create a Single News Feed for Multiple Course Offerings

Desire2Learn does not have a way to create a single News item and share that with all of an instructor's course offerings. Instructors therefore have to create an item in each course offering or create it once and then copy it into each course offering. A workaround is to use a custom widget with a Twitter feed. The widget would have to be added to each course offering but it would allow an instructor to post something once (in Twitter) and have that appear many places (inside the Twitter widget on each course offering's homepage). The challenge will be for us to fit important information into fewer than 140 characters. ;-)

Edit the Course Homepage and Create a Custom Widget

The default homepage for course offerings can be edited. Widgets can be removed and added, and custom widgets can be created.

Use Google Docs to Create an Image Rotator

You can use a Google Slides presentation to create an image rotator for your course. For example, your students might submit photos to you and you want them to be displayed on your course homepage.

Sharing Custom Widgets Among Courses

Perhaps you created a custom Twitter widget or a banner widget that you want to share with your other courses.

1. Click on the course you want to add the custom widget.
2. Click on Edit Course and chose Import/Export/Copy Components.
3. Make sure Copy Components is selected and press Next.
4. On Existing Offering scroll down and select the course you want to import from and press Next.
5. Select Widgets from the list. Choose Individual Items to Copy to select only the custom widget you want. Press Next.
6. Select the widget you want to copy over and press Next.
7. On the Confirm Components to Copy box review and press Next to accept.
8. Once the widget is completed it will show a green checkbox. Press Done to finish. You can then go to the Homepages, Content/Layout and add your custom widget.

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.