Tool serves as practice space for experimentation, won’t alter live-course content.
Nick DiTulio, Marit Smith, Tanner Wilde, Todd Wolfe, and Alex McDaniel
March 18, 2022
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Having an unpublished location to test out various tools and settings without fear of altering or deleting content in a live course is beneficial. This location is known as a Sandbox and is a “playground” for content creation. Sandboxes can also serve as a backup location for your live course. Everything you can do in your course shell, you can do in the Sandbox, making it an ideal location to practice and test the functionality of a variety of tools and settings.
When moving from semester to semester or thinking about making significant changes to an existing course element, your Sandbox shell gives you a place to import content so you can clean up your course before importing the Sandbox into your real shell (the one with students in it or the next-semester course shell if you are working ahead).
Interested to see what certain third-party applications will do? Do you want to know how the content will look when importing? Do you want a backup location for your course content? Your Sandbox shells are a great playground for experimenting and creating backup information without editing your live course.
For complete written step-by-step instructions, visit the Center for Teaching, Learning and Design Ready Spotlight tutorial page.
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