1. Course Content: All of your course content appears in the main part of the page. When you open a piece of content, it slides out in a layer on top of the Course Content page. Close layers to go back to a previous spot in your course.

2. Details & Actions: Manage your course with these options 

3. Navigation Bar :Open frequently used tools in one step. Select an icon to check the course calendar, respond to class discussions, access the course gradebook, and send a message. 

Add announcements for, Due dates for assignments and projects, Corrections/clarifications of materials, Exam schedules

You can add, edit, and delete announcements from the Announcements page. When you add an announcement, you can also send it as an email to students in your course. 

More about announcements

When you create a group or set of groups, you can select group members in these ways:

• Manually select group members—also called custom groups

• Have the system randomly select members as you create group sets

• Allow students to self-enroll

More about creating groups

Automatically created grade items 

When you create a gradable item in your course, a gradebook item is created automatically. 

Manually added grade items 

You can add grade items that don't require submissions such as participation. These grade items are also called manual grades, manually created items, or offline items.

For manually added items, no submissions exist. You assign scores and feedback on the student list page.

In a course, access the Messages page on the navigation bar. All your course messages and responses appear. You can easily scan the entire list and open a message to read all the responses.

Your unread messages appear first in the list. Each message displays the profile picture of the creator. Under the creator's name, you can view how many participants are included or if the message is for the whole class.