This document provides an overview of a faculty learning community workshop on customizing courses in the Brightspace (D2L) learning management system. The workshop will cover basic course customization using tools like widgets, themes, and third-party apps. It will also discuss challenges of customization and standardization. Specific sessions will demonstrate how to build personalized home pages using widgets, provide examples of widget types, and discuss accessibility and universal design in online courses. The document lists several session topics and includes brief descriptions, quotes, and references.

1. There's No Place Like Home:
Widgets and Themes and More... Oh My!
MSU Faculty Learning Community:
Learn2Design with Brightspace by
D2L

2. Are you looking for the inspiration
to make your LMS your own?
We’ll show you how we use D2L Brightspace tools
like widgets, themes, and third-party apps
to transform our courses
from the monochromatic farmlands
to the glitz of the Emerald City.
The yellow-brick road leads to the Emerald City in the 1939
film "The Wizard of Oz." Turner Entertainment / Warner Bros.

3. Navigation
Need for standardization
Metacognitive skill
Authentic Assessment

4. Section 1
Basic Course Customization

5. Audience: Student

6. Audience: Student

7. Audience: Faculty community

8. Audience: Faculty workflow

9. Audience: Faculty workflow

10. Challenges

11. Challenges

12. Challenges

13. Section 2
Widgey Wizardry: FLC Personalized Home Pages

14. • From the D2L Resource Center:
“Custom widgets allow you to expand the functionality of available content in
your homepages to suit your specific organizational and/or course needs. You
can add custom HTML code to create a wide range of widgets. As an Instructor,
you can create custom widgets for your courses, or use custom widgets shared
to your course offerings from the organization, department, or semester level.
Create a custom widget
On the My Home or Course Home page, click Edit Course, then click Widgets.
Click Create Widget.
Enter a Name and Description for the widget.
Click Save and Close.”
https://documentation.desire2learn.com/en/creating-custom-widgets
Widgets

15. •Twitter
•Links
•Facebook
•note privacy
settings
Widget Examples

16. Section 3
Health Psychology

19. What happens when you click on an icon?

20. More Checklist Items

21. More Orientation Checklist Hints

22. More checklist ideas!

23. FDR 1936
“We know that equality of individual
ability has never existed and never will,
but we do insist that equality of
opportunity still must be sought.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt: "Address at Little Rock, Arkansas.," June 10, 1936.
Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency
Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=15297.

24. Universal Design
When have you benefitted from something that was designed for
accessibility?
Jack Fisher was born in 1918, in Kalamazoo
Close to graduate at Harvard Law School when WW II began;
enlisted and was in a full body cast for months
Couldn’t find a job due to steel braces from hip to neck, returned
to Harvard and came home after graduation
Took it upon himself to assist disabled veterans and help them
become mobile through curb cuts

25. Accessibility approach
MSU online and blended courses need
to meet WCAG 2.0 (Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines 2.0) standards
BTW: So do any online portions of
Face2Face classes
Accessibility is an ongoing process of
course design and the addition of new
course materials
This is different than accommodations
(which are based on accessibility)

26. Section 4
R Essentials for Natural Resources Professionals

27. • Course design by Angie Leslie
• Unit: Fisheries & Wildlife
R Essentials for
Natural Resources
Professionals

28. • Wizard of Oz Jacket Copy. (n.d.) Los Angeles Times. Retrieved March 17, 2015 from
http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-off-to-see-the-wonderful-wizard-of-oz-001-
photo.html
References