New Content Experience (Lessons) FAQ

A: The New Content Experience became available for all MSU faculty and staff in August. 2021. Course Administrators control the view, and they can opt-in or opt-out according to their preference. See some of the limitations below before deciding to turn it on for live semester courses. There are no future dates planned for when D2L will switch all courses to the new experience and there should be ample warning before we do have a date.

A: To turn it on, first go to the Content tab. If it is a new course, you will see a notification automatically drop down, asking if you want to turn on the new experience. After choosing to turn it on or leave it off, look for a small arrow in the upper right corner under the course navbar to re-open the options. You can switch back and forth between experiences without loss of content.

The default value is set to off, so no action is needed by the instructor to continue teaching with the normal "Classic" content view. Select Leave it off or collapse the notification. If the instructor chooses to Turn it on it will affect the student's view of Content. It is best not to switch views in the middle of an active semester course. Copy your course to a development site and switch between on and off in order to see what it will look like and to practice creating with the new experience.

NOTE: The instructor view and the student view do not look the same. It is recommended to impersonate the Demo Student from the Classlist for the most accurate student view. The "View as a Student" option is not completely accurate with the New Content Experience and will show hidden views to you, although those files will actually be hidden to students.

A: New Content Experience (Lessons) now supports adding nested modules up to a depth of five levels. Top-level modules are called Units (though you can label them any way you wish). The second level sub-modules are called Lessons. Sub-modules within Lessons are called Folders. 

A: Date management has been added for most topic types. This includes Units, Lessons, Folders, webpages (new file), uploaded files (e.g., Word, PPT, PDF) and links. Activity properties are usually set in the tool settings for Assignments, Discussions, Quizzes, etc. Go to the Classlist and impersonate the Demo Student to get a true view of what students will see when restricted dates (start/end) and due dates are added. Dates can be managed in the edit menu for a content topic, or by going to Course Admin > Manage Dates.

Note: Learners cannot see topics, including Assignments and Quizzes, that have a future start date or past end date. Create an HTML document as a placeholder explaining when the items will appear.

Content links to Assignment and Discussion activities now have more date availability options to make the links visible to learners with start dates shown. After entering or editing a start date, click on the link below the date and select "Visible with submission restricted" to allow the student to see the activity title and start date. They can access the item but will not be able to submit or post until after the displayed start date.

Go to Course Admin > Availability Date Defaults to set the preferred date availability behavior for new activities.

A: The NCE is designed to be a simpler experience and does not include all of the advanced features in the current experience. Some of the gaps are expected to be added in future updates. See the question on giving feedback to indicate which missing items are most important to you.

• Search Topics (in the student view), Overview, Bookmarks, Course Schedule, and Bulk Edit Content do not exist in the NCE. Copy any materials from the previous course Overview area to a new unit, or new page, titled Course Overview. Students can view course schedules in the Calendar tool or Brightspace Pulse app. Instructors can use the search topics function in their view of NCE.
• Content Settings are not available. The box to enable HTML Content Templates has been set globally, however there is currently no way to go to content settings to set a template path. When adding a document template, instructors can browse their course offering files for template pages. They just can't set a default path directly to them.
• Content Item descriptions do not display. Folder descriptions display in full view, but any descriptions added to items in the NCE (such as files or links) will not show to students. Descriptions that were added in the classic Content interface will also not appear to students. Keep in mind that folder descriptions are not course files and will not be counted as items within the folder. You need to copy the material from the folder description into an HTML page in order to include them in the "count" and display content completion marks.
• The "Notify learners of updated content" checkbox is not available. Use announcements or activity feed to notify students of changes to content.
• Exempting content is not currently a feature.
• Create a Video/Audio item is not listed as an option. Create an HTML page and use Insert Stuff, with My Media or Enter Embed Code, to bring in a video. Use My Media if you want to track video usage statistics.
• Large files may be difficult to load as the NCE does not wait long enough for the upload to finish.
• File types that are not supported by the learner view will result in the file downloading automatically.
• Microsoft OneDrive files do not display inline – users are prompted to open the topic in a new window.

Note: It is possible to use the item's menu options to toggle an item from required to optional. It will be labeled as optional in the learner view and will be counted in the summary at the end of a unit. Learners will be able to manually mark an item as completed, if it was previously set that way in Classic Content.

A: You might be entering information in the folder descriptions rather than adding files to the folders. Place teaching materials within the folders as a new page (Create New > HTML Document) or upload files. You can drag-and-drop files from your computer to the desired location. Teaching from the folder description area removes much of the functionality that students rely on for streamlined navigation, viewing, and printing. Keep unit/lesson/folder descriptions short. Consider adding a decorative photo for visual engagement. Find free photos at pexels.com.

Note: Printing PDFs is supported via the Brightspace PDF viewer (or browser view); printing of other types of topics may not be supported but can now be downloaded and viewed in their original format.

A: The Standards/Learning Outcomes tool was turned on at the beginning of fall semester 2022. Outcomes can be aligned with content and will show a percentage in the content area as you add them, along with an option to find gaps in your aligned outcomes. You can learn more about the new Standards & Learning Outcomes tool in the D2L Help - MSU Documentation area.

A: When you opt-out (turn it off), you will be asked why you are switching back. Included is an option for providing feedback that the D2L product managers will receive. You can also send an enhancement request to the MSU IT Service Desk at https://ithelp.msu.edu.

A: Help documentation is located in the "New Content Experience" module within the Instructor D2L Self-directed training site (see D2L Help > Educational Technology Training for access).

Other D2L Brightspace help documentation and videos:

• The New Content Experience in Brightspace
• Lessons for Instructors (D2L video tutorials)

For other questions and concerns, contact the MSU IT Service Desk.