Courses

The navigation tree is located on the left side of the screen. The lower part – called 'Course content' – contains the elements you add to the course. The folder structure updates once you add a new item. Each element in the navigation tree is a link that is displayed in the work area when you click it. The upper part of the navigation tree contains the standard course features:

Course features	Description
Status and follow-up	Allows you to manage the grade book, attendance, progress reports, assessment, and working portfolios and to see a status overview for all elements in the course.
Participants	Allows you to add and remove participants, synchronize the course with the hierarchy and see a card list of all the course participants.
Groups	Allows you to add and manage groups, add group participants, create subgroups and send messages to groups.
Settings	Allows you to manage the course settings. Here you can decide what elements to include in the course, manage lesson plans, learning objectives, assessment settings, course properties, course files, and community.
Planner	The planner enables teachers to create detailed lesson and course plans – and, because it keeps all teaching materials associated with the subject in one place, it makes it easy to create lessons on the fly if needed.
Links	Allows you to add and manage links and create link categories.
Trash can	Allows you to search for, restore or delete permanently elements you have deleted.

The work area is surrounded by the navigation tree to the left and the main menu above. It is in the work area you actually work with the courses. When you enter a course the course main page is displayed.

The work area page is composed of various content blocks. Teachers can decide what content blocks to include on the course dashboard by clicking Add content block.

Content blocks

Dashboards and pages have two interesting features: the possibility of changing the layout and of adding content blocks. Content blocks support drag-and-drop, allowing you to rearrange the content blocks on the dashboard.

What is a content block?

A content block is a piece of content used in dashboards and the page tool – for example, news, RSS feeds, and polls. You can drag the blocks and place them where you prefer on the page, and you can cut and paste them to other pages.

Types of content blocks

Available on shared dashboards, course dashboards, ‘My dashboard’, and pages:

• Files: Upload files from your computer and link to them from the dashboard. You can organize the files in folders, and they appear with clickable folders and links in the content block.
• Images: Upload images from your computer, and insert them into the dashboard. The images are automatically resized.
• Links: Add a list of links to your dashboard for easy access by your users. Remember that you can link to content in Your web files, as well as Internet links.
• Rich content: Add content blocks with text, images, links, and other rich content. This block has many of the same features as the note learning tool.
• RSS: Import your favourite RSS feeds into your dashboard. This allows you to subscribe to blogs, news media, and similar feeds, and to receive automatic updates when one of the RSS feeds is updated.

Available on shared dashboards, course dashboards, and pages:

• Poll: Add a simple poll and allow other users to vote. The poll consists of a question and up to 10 alternative responses. You can choose to display the results to all users at any time, show them only after the user has cast a vote, or show the results to editors only. You can also decide to show the number of votes and allow users to change their vote.

Enabled by default on shared dashboards if the features are enabled for your school:

• Events: List the tasks from your calendar.
• Courses: List your favourite courses.
• Communities: List your favourite communities.
• News: Show the latest news messages from courses and hierarchies.
• Unread messages: Display a list of unread messages from your internal-messages inbox.
• E-mail: Show a list of the unread e-mail messages from your Google e-mail account.

Enabled by default on course dashboards if the features are enabled for your course:

• News
• Task list
• Favourites
• Events to and including
• New and edited elements
• To prevent pages and dashboards from being overfilled with content blocks, you are limited to having 20 active content blocks. When you click the X to remove a content block, it is simply deactivated, and it can be reactivated at any time. To reactivate it, click Add content block > Reactivate content block. It is possible to remove deleted content blocks permanently, by clicking the settings icon on a dashboard > Add content block > View deactivated content blocks. To delete a content block permanently, click the 'x' behind the content block you want to delete.

1. Click Add course.
2. Enter a The name of the course can be, for example, History 102, Mathematics or English. The title is always used in headings and lists where the element appears.title, select a In the calendar, all events associated with a specific course have their own background colour. This makes it easy to distinguish the different courses from another in the calendar. The background colour is also used in early learner courses.colour with the colour picker and enter a Some courses have codes such as English 102 or English 103. This is an optional field.course code.
3. Click Save to add the course.

Tip: If you want to upload a zipped file archive into the course, click Upload file. Browse for the file on your computer and click Upload file. Read more about file uploading. The file package may consist of files you have used in a previous course, or perhaps elements produced by an external publisher. itslearning supports the SCORM and IMS content package standards.

1. Enter the course you want to delete.
2. Click Settings.
3. Click Properties.
4. Click Delete course.
5. Confirm by clicking the Delete button.

You can choose from a wide variety of learning tools when adding content to courses.

1. Click the Courses tab.
2. Enter the course you want to add content to.
3. Click Add. An overview describing all of the learning tools appears in the work area.
4. Click one of the learning tools to add it. You find a description of each learning tool here.

1. Click Add bulletin.
2. Enter a title.
3. Publish: From the drop-down list, select whether you want to publish the bulletin now or at a specific time. If you select 'At a specific time', the bulletin is published automatically on this specific date, at the time indicated. Read more about activating here.
4. Remove: From the drop-down list, select whether you want to remove the bulletin now or at a specific time. If you select 'At a specific time', the bulletin is removed automatically on the specified date, at the time indicated. Read more about activating here.
5. Draft: If you want to save your bulletin without publishing it and continue working on it later, you can check this box to save it as a draft.
6. Disable comments: If you do not want to allow other people to comment on your bulletin, check this box.
7. Enter the bulletin text in the text field.
8. Click Save.

Tip: If you want to delete or edit the bulletin later, click the bulletin and use the Edit bulletin and Delete bulletin links to edit and delete.