About Content and Content Types in D2L

Overview

Your instructor will use the Content tool to provide course materials and activities for your course. Content is an important area for accessing and viewing course materials. The types of course materials posted by your instructor may contain a variety of different types of file formats and also links to other areas within the course. The content area may include important items for you to access, such as: a Syllabus, Assignments, PowerPoint Lectures, links to videos or websites and links to Activities within the course.

Video

OCC students and faculty can click on the video below to launch it.

Finding Course Materials

Once you enter your course, click Content on the navigation bar.

Identifying Content Types from the Table of Contents

The Table of Contents in the Content area of the course lists all of the modules in the course and can be accessed from the left module pane. This view makes it easy to browse all the course materials and assignments. You can easily navigate through the modules by clicking the titles in the left pane. Modules are used to organize your course's content, like folders on your computer or chapters within a book. Content items in a module are referred to as Topics, which link to a variety of files and activities, including:

  • Documents that your instructor has uploaded to the course, such as: Word, PowerPoint, Excel and PDF
  • Publisher-provided materials
  • Videos, images, and other multimedia
  • External websites
  • Web pages that your instructor has created in D2L
  • Quizzes, Assignments, Discussions and Checklists

Determining Content Types in a D2L Module

The names of Modules are listed on the left. Click on the name of a Module (e.g. Week 1) to view the Topics listed on the right. Content Topics display a text description as well as an icon (e.g. Web Page, PowerPoint Presentation, PDF document, Discussion Topic, Word Document, Excel Spreadsheet, Link). Examples of a variety of types of content you may see in your course site are listed below.

Was this helpful?
0 reviews
Print Article

Related Articles (2)

Your instructor may use Date Restrictions for Content to control when a module or topic is available for you to access. This means that modules and topics may only be available during a specific range of time. Instructors may also set up Due Date deadlines for modules and topics. Due dates are different than date restrictions. Check with your instructor first regarding any questions about specific due dates. Another way your instructor controls access to content is by using Release Conditions.
You can download content in D2L for each of the content topics. There are two ways to download content in D2L. Topics may be downloaded as an individual file to use outside of D2L for purposes such as reviewing when studying. You are also able to download content at the module level, which includes all content topics in the module packaged as a .zip file.