Creating and editing resources
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In Totara, you can add a variety of learning resources to either keep for your own learning and development or to share with your colleagues.
A resource could be anything that can be used for learning and can range from articles, videos and podcasts to formal courses built in Totara. As you can link to resources anywhere on the internet, you’re only really limited by your own imagination.
For example, if you wanted to learn more about leadership skills, you could create a resource that linked to an excellent TED talk or to an article that you thought might help you think about the topic in more detail.
So, how do you add a new resource? Let’s take a look.
You can add resources to your own personal library, to a workspace library or a playlist. Wherever you add your resource, the process is the same. I’ll add a resource to my library by first selecting it in the top navigation. Here I can see any of the resources I’ve already set up.
I can also see any resources that other people in my organisation have shared with me, or that I have saved.
To start adding a new resource simply select the plus icon. You’ll then be able to add a new resource or survey.
I’m going to start today by creating a new resource.
I’ll add a title for my resource.
I’d like to add a YouTube video on leadership. So all I need to do is copy and paste the YouTube URL into the box and the video will display automatically in the resource when I add it.
I’ll also add a hashtag to the resource so that others in my organisation can find it quickly.
When a user adds a hashtag to a resource, and that resource is public, it means other users can find it by searching the term in the learning catalogue.
After I’ve added my description and hashtags, I can decide whether I want to add the resource just for myself or choose to make it public.
If I want the resource to appear in the course catalogue, it needs to be public, so I’ll select that option, which allows all other users to view and share my resource.
You’ll need to indicate how long it takes to review the resource. Some articles might be quite short, at around less than 5 minutes but as this is a video, I’ll select ‘more than 10 minutes.’ This is useful because you can set a filter on your catalogue to allow users to filter for content based on the amount of time they have.
You also need to give your resource one or more system-level tags to make it easier for others to find. These tags are set by Site Administrators and you can’t create new ones here, although you can add any hashtags you like. These tags can also be used to set up filters in your catalogue. I’m going to assign this to the topic of ‘Leadership’
You can also share a resource with specific individuals or share it to a workspace library. I know that a couple of my colleagues are interested in leadership so I’m going to share the video with them.
When I select Done, you can see that I’ve successfully added a new resource!
On the resource card, you’ll quickly be able to see if the resource is being used by other people by how many people have liked, commented on, shared with other learners or to workspaces and if the resource has been added to any playlists.
You’ll notice that your colleagues can then easily comment on the resource so you can have a debate or question anything concerning the resource.
And if we go to the workspace I shared it with, you can also see the resource shown in the workspace library.
I might want to add an existing course to the workspace library too. I can easily do that by adding a new resource in the same way and choosing to add an existing course.
Choose the course (or multiple courses) you want to add to the library and then Add.
The course is added as a library resource. You can also use a similar process to search for and add existing resources.
The resources we’ve added so far have added their own image to the resource card to distinguish them in the library. Courses use the course image, while an embedded video will use a thumbnail from the video. But you can also add your own images to resources that don’t create one automatically.
The first image you add to the resource itself will also be used as the resource image when it appears in a playlist or library view.
When I’ve entered the information about my resource the image is used on the resource card here in the library.
So that’s how you can quickly upload a new resource in Totara. Why not have a go at adding a new resource today?