1. Introduction: Customize Content for Your Students
The Garland Science Learning System (GSLS) is completely customizable. You can edit, delete, or
add content to create a unique learning experience for your students. This guide assumes a basic
familiarity with the GSLS, and focuses solely on customization options. If you are just getting
started, please review the Quick Visual Guide or ask your sales representative for a demo.
If all you want to do is edit or delete existing content, Sections 1-5 of this document should be
sufficient to get you going. Sections 6 and beyond explain how to do more advanced
customizations and add your own content.
2. Unlock the Customization Features: The Edit Button
Click the "Edit" button on the Dashboard Home Page to unlock the customization features.
The edit button is located above the list of modules on the right side.
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3. The Edit Panel: Organize Content, Control Student Access, and Unlock Content Editing
When you click Edit, the modules list will open features that allow you to customize the course.
Key customization features:
• The "Re-order" function allows you to place the modules in any order that you want. Just
click on the double-caret icon in the box, and drag the module to its desired position in
the list.
• The "Active" function allows you to hide modules from the students. If you de-select the
"Active" box, students will no longer see the module. However, the module will still be
there; it just won't be accessible to students. Use this feature to hide topics you don't
cover in your course or to make modules inaccessible after a certain date.
• The "Start Date" feature allows you to set a specific date and time when a module
becomes accessible students. To turn off access to a module, de-select the "Active" box for
that module.
• The "Customize" button opens the content-editing tool in a new tab.
4. Introduction to the Content-Editing Tool
The "Customize" button opens the content-editing tool. The content editing tool allows you to
edit or delete the publisher-provided content. It also allows you to add your own content.
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Overview of key features:
• Similar to Microsoft PowerPoint®, the content is organized by slides.
• You can delete an entire slide or create new slides.
• Within each slide, the content is organized in boxes, as indicated by the dashed white lines.
• When you click inside a content box, it opens the content "widget." The widget provides
the specific tool to edit or replace the content within the box. There are different widgets
for different content types.
• If you create a new slide, you must choose a layout for the slide, and then select widgets to
populate the content of the slides.
• Because this is a Web application, you need to manually save your changes by clicking the
"Save" button at the top of the editing tool. We will remind you to do this throughout the
document. If you don't save your changes, you will lose your work!
5. Introduction to Widgets: Editing Publisher-Provided Content with One Click
Whether you are editing publisher-provided content or adding your own content, a content
widget is used to make changes. For publisher-provided content, all you do is click on the
content box, and the corresponding content widget will open.
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While there are many different widgets, the three most common are: (1) the Text Widget, (2) the
Image Widget, (3) and the Multiple-choice Question Widget. With these three widgets you can
edit nearly all of the publisher-provided content.
Text Widget
The text widget has a simple text editor with basic formatting options.
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Image Widget
The image widget allows you to upload your own images, add captions, or adjust image size.
Multiple-choice Question Widget
The multiple-choice question widget allows you to edit questions. Formatting instructions are
located in the blue boxes. Questions styles—such as bold, italics, and superscripts—need to be
applied with HTML tags. The appendix to this document contains a list of common HTML tags.
For details on how to use specific widgets, see Section 9. Key Features of Representative Widgets . . .
And please, don't forget to save changes that you want to keep!
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6. Moving Widgets Among Content Boxes & Control of Slide Layout
It's important to remember the difference between a content box and a content widget. The
contain box is the space, indicated by a white dashed line, allocated for different types of content.
The content widget is the tool that allows you to edit or insert specific types of content into that
space.
The widgets can be copied-and-pasted to a different content box within an individual slide or
even to an entirely new slide.
Key features to note:
• A widget can be removed from a content box with the "Remove" button.
• Removing a widget creates an empty content box.
• An empty content box can be populated with content either by using the "Pick Widget"
button, or by pasting an existing widget from another content box within the slide into the
space.
• All widgets can be cut, copied, or pasted from one content box to another content box
within a single slide or between slides. The buttons to do this are located at the bottom of
a content box that contains a widget.
• The layout of content boxes within the slide can be changed using the "Change Title and
Layout" button. This button opens the "Title and Layout" widget that provides 36 different
content box configurations for the slide.
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7. Creating A New Slide from Scratch
To create a new slide for your own content, select the existing slide above the location where you
want to add the new slide. Then select the "+New" slide button at the top of the slide list. This
will open the "Title and Layout" options widget.
Title and Layout Widget
This widget allows you to select a layout for the content boxes and add a title to your slide. The
layout can be changed at any time. That is, you are not stuck with the layout you originally
choose for a slide, if you want to make changes.
The content box layout selected above (highlighted in color) will provide 3 content boxes, with
one large box above two smaller ones.
When you have chosen your layout, select "Done" and you will have a new slide with empty
content boxes. To add to content to an empty content box, click on the "Pick Widget" button.
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8. The "Pick Widget" Tool
The "Pick Widget" tool allows you to select the content widget for a content box.
Pick Widget Tool
Key things to note:
• There are currently 19 different widgets organized into 5 categories: Text, Media, Charts,
Questions, and Tools.
• In addition to handling simple text, there is a LaTeX option for inserting equations into a
slide.
• Images can be added directly from the Internet or from your computer.
• Movies can be inserted from YouTube or Vimeo, but not your computer.
• Most of the chart options allow you to upload data from a spreadsheet to create custom
graphs.
• Supported question formats are multiple-choice, multiple-choice with multiple answers,
and open responses.
• Simply click on the widget you want to use, enter the content, and it will appear in the
content box selected.
And remember: don't forget to "Save" any content you've created or you will lose it!
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9. Key Features of Representative Widgets
The widgets share core functionality, and work similarly. Once you are familiar with a few
representative widgets, it will be easy to use all of the widgets. Below we review key features of
four widgets. With this information, you should be able to use all the other widgets successfully.
Text Widget (with additional details)
Key features to note:
• As shown before, the text widget provides standard text formatting options. The tool bar
at the top of the text entry window allows you to style text and insert links and tables.
• The Frame Settings, at the bottom of the widget, are used to control when the content is
revealed to a student.
• The widgets within a slide can be revealed one-at-a-time, as the student hits the next
button, and in the order specified in the "Reveal Sequence" window. If this is not selected,
the content will appear at the beginning of the slide.
• The Frame Settings shown here are a feature shared with all widgets. Some widgets have
additional Frame Settings, as you will see below.
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Image Widget (with additional details)
Key features to note:
• You can import images from the Internet by entering the URL address for the image into
the "Choose An Image" field.
• You can also upload images from your computer. This must be done in two separate steps:
first you choose the file, and then you upload the file to the system.
• When an image is correctly captured from a website or uploaded, a thumbnail of the image
will appear in the widget.
• Image size can be adjusted using the drop-down menu.
• A caption that appears underneath the image can be added through the "Caption" field.
• The widget contains light blue boxes that provide handy hints for using the widget. The
blue-box instructions are a feature of other widgets as well.
• The "Frame Settings" are identical to the text widget.
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Multiple-choice Question Widget (with additional details)
Key features to note:
• The question widget does not contain tools to format text. Special text formatting must
be applied using HTML tags. Please see appendix for brief instructions and a short list of
useful HTML tags.
• The question text must follow the format specified in the light blue boxes or the questions
won't work.
• Select "Record Answer on Submit" to add a "Submit" button to the question. This will allow
the system to record the first answer selected by the student, but still allow the student to
look at the other answers. This is important if each answer has a different feedback
response.
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•
•
This widget has additional Frame Settings. You can require students to answer the
question before proceeding, and add supplementary data to the quesiton, such as a
Bloom's Number. Students will not see the supplementary data.
If you want the question to count towards the score, make sure to check the "Assessment"
box at the bottom. If you want the students to answer the question, but not have it count
towards the final score, deselect this option. If deselected, you will still see student
responses in the dashboard; it just won't be part of the final score on the module.
Bar Chart Widget
The different chart widgets work similarly and allow you to create attractive, custom graphs
within the system. Data can be entered manually or copied from a spreadsheet. As with all
widgets, follow the instructions in the light blue boxes. And don't forget to save your work!
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APPENDIX: Basic HTML to Format Questions and HTML Entities for Greek Characters
As noted above, at this time, HTML tags must be used to format the text of questions and answers
in the question widget.
HTML formatting tags are easy to use. The tag itself is a simple code contained within brackets.
For example <i> is used to add italics. You simply insert the tag before the text you want to style,
and then insert a second "close" tag at the end of the text. The "close" tag is exactly the same as
the "open" tag, except that it contains a slash "/" within the tag. So the close tag for <i> is </i>.
To format text, an open tag must always be accompanied by a close tag or it won't work. Some
tags do not require a close tag, but most formatting tags do.
HTML is most easily understood by looking at a simple example. In the following example, E. coli
is formatted in italics and the word deadly is formatted in bold:
<i>E. coli</i> is a common bacteria found in the gut, but some strains can be <b>deadly</b>.
The following tags may be useful when formatting questions within the widget:
Italic
Bold
Superscript
Subscript
= <i> </i>
= <b> </b>
= <sup> </sup>
= <sub> </sub>
The <br> tag will insert a line break anywhere you want, but it does not require a close tag.
Last but not least, special characters, such as Greek letters, need to be entered using HTML
entities. HTML entities are special codes that are used to display non-standard characters. A
short list of HTML entities is provided below, and a more comprehensive list is available online:
http://www.dionysia.org/html/entities/symbols.html
&#915;
&#916;
&#920;
&#923;
&#928;
&#931;
&#934;
&#936;
&#937;
&#945;
&#946;
&#947;
&#948;
= Γ greek capital letter gamma
= Δ greek capital letter delta
= Θ greek capital letter theta
= Λ greek capital letter lambda
= Π greek capital letter pi
= Σ greek capital letter sigma
= Φ greek capital letter phi
= Ψ greek capital letter psi
= Ω greek capital letter omega
= α greek small letter alpha
= β greek small letter beta
= γ greek small letter gamma
= δ greek small letter delta
&#949;
&#950;
&#951;
&#952;
&#954;
&#955;
&#956;
&#958;
&#960;
&#963;
&#964;
&#966;
&#968;
=ε
=ζ
=η
=θ
=κ
=λ
=µ
=ξ
=π
=σ
=τ
=φ
=ψ
greek small letter epsilon
greek small letter zeta
greek small letter eta
greek small letter theta
greek small letter kappa
greek small letter lambda
greek small letter mu
greek small letter xi
greek small letter pi
greek small letter sigma
greek small letter tau
greek small letter phi
greek small letter psi