Tips for setting up the course homepage

@Ulf Molich​ , the layout @Stefanie Baldwin​ demonstrates is what we use. About 6 months before we activated Daylight for our production site, we had a competition among our in-house design team for both the institutional home page and the enforced course home page. We all built home page layouts, reviewed them as a group, then chose and tweaked. We had a three column layout and also a few more widgets pre-Daylight.

The one thing I regret about our daylight choices is that we didn't take advantage of the Daylight transition to get rid of the Content Browser on the course home page. The Content link we have in the Navbar is really a better entry into the tool.

I am attaching a student-view of our course home page layout. I made on a computer, zooming way out, so you could see the calendar. (If we don't have that Content browser, it would be easier to find the Calendar!)

@Stefanie Baldwin​ , Here is our org homepage. There is a custom "Help" widget you are not seeing beneath the skinny Announcements.

@Ulf Molich​, an option shared by a Community member in another discussion thread is to put Content front and center by making the Content tool serve as the course home page! I really liked the idea, but didn't go there because Announcements are very important to many instructors. Our focus group results strongly suggested that students would not view announcements unless they were literally in front of their face; making Announcements a Navbar link would have meant out of sight, out of mind. So, we stayed with widgets, giving Announcements the large-div place of honor on course home pages. But we added below the Announcements our custom "Help" widget, which also lives on the org home page. While many of our instructors use Announcements heavily, other instructors do not use it at all! We didn't like the idea of students entering their course to see a mostly-empty large div. Plus, we figured that if people were in a course that had no Announcements, it might be a good idea to put "Help" front and center.

A widget-based course home page also allowed us to give the Course Overview widget a place (right on top of the Content Browser) above the fold for instructors. (BTW the panels linked in the Course Overview widget are not responsive! I have a PIE on that; D4292 .)

And yes, we had focus groups and usability testing. The only thing on our course home page design that was not based on data from pre-daylight and Test Site Daylight testing and data collection, plus focus groups, was the inclusion of the Content Browser. It is not used by our students. Students quickly realize that Content, wherever they left it, is one click away in the Navbar.

We know that about 15% of our user hits are on smaller mobile devices. That has grown from 12% a few months ago. Whether the growth is due to the switch to Daylight, or whether it reflects a trend that is independent of D2L design considerations, I couldn't say. Is 12-15% the tail wagging the design dog? Also couldn't say.

@Ulf Molich​ , our data is for our users; your users could be different. I expect you and your colleagues will want to do your own focus groups and usability testing. You might reach different conclusions, and that is fine.

What are you transitioning from?