Your course’s homepage

Adding a video or image to the course description

You may also want to add a video or an image (such as a logo) to your course description. You add this in the course description or in a label.

Adding a video to the course description

For storage reasons, videos should be embedded from a host site such as YouTube or Vimeo rather than directly uploaded to your course’s homepage.

To embed a video, place the cursor at the point in the course content where you want to add a video and click on the Embed media icon.

This will open a new pop-up window with the heading Content properties.

Copy and paste the URL of a video into the Enter URL: field.

Assuming the URL is valid, if you click on another field in this form it should automatically populate with the title of the video in the Describe this content (optional): field and dimensions will appear in the Size fields. You can adjust this information as preferred.

Click on Save content.

It is good accessibility practice to provide a transcript of video and audio material in your course. Many learners find transcripts helpful, even if the audio or video file is fully accessible to them.

There are two ways of adding a transcript.

The first method is to click on the Source code Pro icon and scroll down to where you embedded the video. Hit the Enter key on your keyboard to create a blank line in the code.

Copy the following code and paste it onto the blank line:

<details>
<summary>Transcript</summary>
 
This is the first paragraph of the transcript.
This is the second paragraph of the transcript.
This is the third paragraph of the transcript.
<hr>
</details>

Then you’ll need to add the transcript itself. As you can see, we’ve added three paragraphs with placeholder text at the end of the code. This is where your transcript will go.

If you have a transcript and it’s already arranged into paragraphs you just need to add ‘’ and ‘’ to the beginning and end of each paragraph and paste them over the placeholder text.
If you’re relying on an automatically generated transcript (from YouTube, for example), note that you will probably need to carefully edit it to make sure that the text is accurate and makes sense. It needs to be easy to read: several lines from an automatically generated transcript should be combined into one paragraph and you will need to make sure that the timing codes are removed.

Once you’re happy that your video and transcript are in place, click on the Save button and confirm that they’ve been added to the course correctly.

An alternative method of adding a transcript is to place the cursor at the point in the course content where you want to add it (e.g. under a video or audio file) and click on the HTML Transcript icon.

Give your transcript a Title, which you have the option of showing or hiding.

Add the transcript text in the Content field.

Click on Save.

Adding an image to the course description

To add an image, click in the Description field in the position where you want the image to appear. Go to Insert/Image in the text editor’s menu or click on the Image icon.

This will open a new pop-up window with the heading Image.

Click on the Browse repositories button.

Click on the Upload a file link, click on the Choose File button and navigate to the image you want to add. Ideally, the image should be no wider than 600 pixels.

Add the name of whoever created or owns the image in the Author box and select the appropriate licence in Choose licence. If the image is yours, is a logo or belongs to a company or organisation, choose All rights reserved. If it’s an image from a photo stock website, select whichever Creative Commons licence is attached to the image.

Click on Upload this file to open the Image details window.

If it’s a figure, describe the image in the How would you describe this image to someone who can’t see it? box. There’s a limit of 750 characters.

If it’s a decorative image, tick the box next to This image is decorative only.

Click on Save.