In Brightspace, you can customize your course homepage through the addition of widgets. Widgets enable users to add functionality, send communications, or otherwise be used to alter the look of a course homepage. If needed, refer to the Add Widgets to a Course Homepage guide for assistance.
| Widget Name | Widget Description | When is this Useful? |
|---|---|---|
| Create a Test Student | This widget allows instructors to impersonate a test student in their class so that they can emulate the student experience. Considerations: – Course builders do not have access to use this widget. – Instructors can only impersonate test students. They do not have access to impersonate real students. – Test students will appear in the classlist. | This widget is useful when setting up a course so that instructors can ensure that everything works as intended. |
| Slim Announcement | The Slim Announcement Widget is an alternative option to the Announcement widget. The Slim Announcement widget offers the same functionality as the Announcement widget without cluttering the page in the case of long announcements. Additionally, similar to the Announcements widget, students will receive an email notification when a new announcement is posted. | This widget is useful when instructors prefer to have a cleaner course homepage. |
| Course Overview | The Course Overview widget provides instructors data on how students are interacting with the course. This includes how many students have visited the course within the last week, how often students are visiting the course, and how students are spending their time in the course. | This widget is useful for instructors that want to track course analytics. |
| Activity Feed | The Activity Feed widget provides a central location for instructors to post messages with a learner comment section and new or existing assignments. | The widget is useful for learners to quickly catch up on all upcoming assignments and any messages from the instructor. |
| Announcements | The Announcements widget allows instructors to communicate any timely messages and important, upcoming dates and events. If the announcements are taking too much space, instructors can choose to remove the widget entirely or utilize the Slim Announcements widget. | This widget is useful to view all announcements in long-form on the course homepage. |
| Calendar | The Calendar widget provides a day-by-day or month-by-month view of upcoming due dates for assignments and quizzes in one spot. | This widget is useful for learners to view immediate and upcoming due dates on the course homepage. |
| Quick Eval | The Quick Eval widget offers instructors and TAs a single location to view all submissions that require grading. | This widget is useful to see what submissions are pending evaluation without the clutter of completed evaluations. |
| Visual Table of Contents (TOC) | The Visual Table of Contents (TOC) widget displays the modules within a course in visual manner, where each module can be set up to show an image, title, module description, and progress meter. This widget can also act as a progress tracker for remaining topics to be completed and bookmarks where a learner left off, allowing them to directly navigate to the next unread topic in the module. | This widget is useful for content-driven courses with a more traditional linear structure. Moreover, this widget will promote learner progress with integrated tracking visuals. |
| Welcome Window | The Welcome Window widget is designed to welcome users and orient them to the structure and navigation of the course, through a pop-up message upon logging into the course for the first time. The message can be customized to include text, images, videos, and multiple pages. | This widget is helpful to orient new users to the course and can be used to display policies, requirements, or important changes or announcements that need to be front and center. |
| Work To-Do | The Work To-Do widget shows all assignments, quizzes, or other content with upcoming and past due dates. | This widget is helpful to call out overdue work to the learner. |
Additional Resources
For a more comprehensive list of widgets that can be added in Brightspace, check out the links below. Please note that not all widgets may be available in USC Brightspace instance.