Screenshot of Content section with Graphic

Screenshot of Content section with Graphic

Content Tool

What is the Content Tool?

The Content tool is used to create, edit and organize course materials such as syllabi, lecture notes, video, audio and readings. The Content tool allows users to navigate through course content and activities.

Why would you use the Content tool?

Use the Content Tool in your course to:

  1. Import/Export existing course files
  2. Modify and manage the way your course content displays
  3. Harmonize multi-media elements to differentiate the learning experience
  4. Integrate learning activities and assessments

Scenario 1: Course Materials Online

Professor Butler teaches a human nutrition course. She has found a great interactive web site where students can enter what they eat each day and then print out an analysis of their diet for calories, fat, sugar, etc.   She decides to provide a link to the interactive diet website in the content area for the appropriate module on nutritional analysis of food. She asks the students to enter their meals on the site daily for a week.

Kelly Marksman is a student who is taking two courses. She is very excited about taking Professor Butler’s course because she always finds Professor Butler utilizing learning tools that assist her in understanding important concepts. She is less enthusiastic about her other course that primarily only uses one delivery method.

The Content tool provides a way to integrate online web resources into course to enhance student learning.

The Content tool allows Professors and Course Designers to add more variety to how they deliver course materials to their students.

Students find the variety of Content in their course more engaging and benefit from access to these media-rich interactive materials to enhance their learning.

 

Scenario 2: Lessons

Professor Johnson is concerned that students may not complete a number of his learning activities as they are spread across a number of course tools, requiring students to explore the course and “discover” them. He decides to build structured learning modules in his content that include links to the discussions, quizzes, and checklists which he previously built. This will help consolidate the different learning activities required to successfully complete each module into a single location.

As a student, Rick Towers is able to access his course and quickly locate all of the learning resources and activities for the module he wishes to work on in the content area. He decides to read through the learning material first, and then completes a module quiz. After receiving an acceptable score, he decides to participate in some discussions to share his thoughts with his peers. Rick feels much less anxious about whether he might have overlooked or missed an assignment or activity because the links are all provided neatly in one location along with the module materials.

The content tool enables an instructor to organize all learning resources and activities for a specific module or week into a single location for students to view and work through. This clearly communicates the requirements for each module and streamlines navigation to the assessments or activities.

The Content tool allows courses to be designed in an organized and consumable manner. Course materials and activities can be woven together to provide a streamlined learning experience.

Students only need to navigate to a single location in the course to view and access all of the different resources and activities.

 

Video Tutorials: Content

 

Your Turn Activity

Screenshot of Content section

Any access issues with the content section contact Champlain’s D2L Brightspace administrator

Access Content section top menu bar, see side bar

  1. Enter a Module (Topic) name
  2. Click on New > Create a File
  3. Enter a Title and text
  4. Select a path to save the HTML file to a folder in Manage Files
  5. Click Publish
  6. Click Edit HTML
  7. Change the text of the Content topic
  8. Click update
  9. Select option to overwrite existing file

Note: Your menu bar might not have all the same items as screenshot.

You do not have to do all the items below. For example, not including a rubric associated to a grade item will not affect the integrated module content.

  1. Create a new Module and give it a name. This is essentially your first topic.
  2. Add a description to the module
  3. Add an external resource like a video or link.
  4. Click on the “new” tab and add create an activity. The simplest form is the “discussion” (Review Discussion Tool section of this tutorial)
  5. Under the “assessments” tab, create a new grade item and define it. The grade item can be the discussion itself. (Review Grades Tool section of this tutorial)
  6. Create a rubric to associate to the grade item. (Review Rubric Tool section of this tutorial)
  7. Associate the “activity” to your grade item.
  8. Review your activity, grade item and rubric to ensure everything is correct
  9. Click update

Use the Advanced Content Tool Functions

  1. Create a Module that contains the following items:
    1. One Topic (Topic A) by using the Learning Environment HTML editor
    2. Two Topics (Topic B & C) made by uploading files from your device
      1. Set date restrictions on Topic B and set Topic C as draft
    3. One Topic (Topic D) that is an ‘Existing Activity’ (Quiz, Discussion, Dropbox etc.)
    4. One Submodule
  2. Turn off completion tracking for Topic A
  3. Move Topic B into the submodule
  4. Replace the file used for Topic C
  5. Delete Topic A file from Content, but keep the associated file intact

 

Take Away 


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