Getting Started in DIVA

The first step in DIVA is to create your first course. Courses are one of the basic ways to share your content in DIVA. You can access the new course tool from the My DIVA page in the right hand sidebar. Select New Course and you'll be brought to page where you can describe your course.

• Name/title of course - This is just for the full name of your course. Department and course number are set below.
• University at which course is offered/housed - Select which university is hosting your course.
• Department/discipline/unit in which course is taught - Select the department.
• Course number (without department; you may include a section number if desired) - Simply enter the number of your course.
• Course description - Here you can write a little bit to describe your course. This is especially helpful for specifics about when and where the course meets or office hour availability.
• Course URL/address - Here you can specify the unique URL of your course. This will be used by students to bookmark and access your course.
• Contact e-mail - If you'd like to, you can enter in your e-mail address so students can contact you.
• External course website - If you have a separate URL, you have the option of linking to it here.

Finally, click Create Course. You'll be brought to your new empty course ready to have files added to it.

DIVA allows you to upload your files into DIVA to share with your students. You can find the upload tool in your toolbar on My DIVA as well as in the top bar. Select the file to upload into DIVA, and click Add To DIVA. You'll then be brought to a screen where you can define the file. Defining files is crucial for organizing your data as well as helping students use the data properly.

• Primary content type - DIVA will generally automatically detect what kind of file you've uploaded. Sometimes it needs a little help though. Ensure that the file type is correctly displayed in the drop down box.
• Title - Give a title to your file. It's recommended you use strong, proper nouns that would differentiate your file from others.
• Overview / description - Here you can get into the specifics of your file. This includes a description of what the file is, where you got the file, who created the file, etc.
• Tags - Tags are used to relate your file to others in your collection and DIVA. Use specific keywords (generally, three words or less) to express the specific subjects and areas your file relates to. DIVA will use this material to generate a list of related files, which is useful for collaboration and finding additional resources for future courses.
• Contents - The contents area will display any content your file bundle currently contains in DIVA.
• Add Content - You can use this tool to add additional content to your file bundle. This would be used for alternative formats, video captions, audio transcripts, codebooks, and other related matter. Once you've added a file, use the Purpose dropdown in the Contents box to tell DIVA what the extra file is for.

Finally, click Finish to save your work and the file.

To share your file with course, return to the new course by clicking My DIVA in the top bar and selecting it from the Quicklist toolbar in the lower right side. Once at the course page, select Create New Folder. DIVA uses folders to organize all files and web documents that you use in your course.

• Folder name - Give the folder an appropriate name. Examples "Assignments" "Videos" "Week #1 Materials"
• Page position - If you have many folders, you can use this option to organize where you want the file to go.
• Folder header color - You can select your favorite color here. Yay!
• Auto-populate with items from feed (RSS) & Maximum number of feed items to show (if folder is auto-populated from feed) - These features relate to the ability to stream RSS feeds onto your course page. This is part of DIVA's advanced usage and can be ignored. There will be a separate tutorial explaining how to use this feature.

Click Add to create your new folder. With your new folder in DIVA, you can now add files into your course. Select the green plus (+) sign in the title bar of your folder and you will be brought to the browse page where you can look at all your files. Select the check box or boxes of any files you want to add and click Add Selected to add them to your folder.

Finally, it's time to share your course with your students. From your course page, select the Sharing and access control tool from the toolbar. Any new course created in DIVA defaults to private, so first click the Enable Sharing button to open the course for students to see. Now you can choose how you want students to access your course.

• Visibility - You can toggle whether you want your course to appear in searches or not. With visible on, students will be able to find your course by searching for it in DIVA or other search engines like Google and Bing.
• Sharing level - Here you have two options to determine how you want to share your course, either Require a password or  Allow the general public to view this course and its contents. If you require a password, you will have to give the password to your students so they can access the course. If the course is open to the general public, students won't need to sign in to see it.

When you're done click Save Settings and you will be brought back to your default course page. You'll notice a new box has appeared in the lower right side of the toolbar; the permalink box. Copy and paste the URL here and share it with your students. Your students will be able to access your course page directly from this link.

Your first course is now ready in DIVA!