Best Practices for Using Links

Relevant to: faculty and staff

This article contains information considered accurate at the time of publishing. Technology updates, changes in University security practices, policies and procedures may effect the information in this article - updates to articles are scheduled on a periodic basis and will address any required changes.

Introduction

The following article shows best practices for building links in Brightspace. Building links properly the first time will ensure they function properly and do not end up confusing or frustrating students.

General Instructions

To add an internal or external hyperlink into a Brightspace page, always use the link button from the HTML content builder menu as illustrated below and not the in-text option.

The quicklink icon from the HTML main menu.

External Links (best practice: all external links need to open in a new window):

Under "Insert Quicklink," go to Url.

The URL option as chosen from the Insert Quicklink menu

Enter the website URL, give your link a title in plain English, and make sure that New Window is the target.

Target selecting New Window, followed by selecting Insert.

Your link will now appear in plain English as illustrated below.

An external weblink added into the webpage, written in plain English

Internal Links (best practice: all internal links need to open in the same window):

For all internal course links (links to other course pages), only use the Insert Quicklink > Content method. Please note: directly linking to Discussions, Assignments, Quizzes, or anything else will cause the links to break or not function correctly.

The Content option from the Insert Quicklink menu.

In this example, the page we want to link is located under Course Information.

The Course Information module selected under Content from the Insert Quicklink menu.

We want to add a link to the M1 Instructor Commentary page, so we will choose this option.

M1 Instructor Commentary page from the Insert Quicklink menu.

A quicklink to the M1 Instructor Commentary page now appears as below.

M1 Instructor Commentary internal link as it appears in the HTML box.

This option automatically sets the link to open in the same window, so you don't need to do anything else.

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