You have the ability to customize the homepage of your course site within Brightspace with your own unique widgets. This is great for personalizing your course site for your course’s benefit.
A “widget” is simply a digital box that you can display information in. Our default course homepage actually has several widgets which you are likely already familiar with (i.e. Announcements, Updates, Calendar). A common use for custom widgets is creating an “Instructor Bio” widget. The “Instructor Bio” widget would commonly have a picture of the instructor of the course, the instructor’s name, contact information, office hours, etc. You can create a custom widget to have whatever information you would like to keep visible on your course homepage. These widgets are also easily editable if you need to update/change any information you created it with.
If you would like to customize the course homepages of your Brightspace course sites, here is a step-by-step walkthrough on how to do so that includes an example “Instructor Bio” widget: Adding a Custom Widget to Your Course Homepage in D2L Brightspace [PDF]
John Bayerl
D2L Brightspace Administrator
Inver Hills Community College
651-450-3631
jbayerl@inverhills.edu