Quick Guide: Add and Embed a Resource

This guide assumes that you have created a Manifold account, have admin access to the backend, have created a project, and ingested a text. If you need to create an account or have your account upgraded, contact manifold@gc.cuny.edu. For help creating a project and adding a text, see the Create a New Project Quick Guide.

Resources are supplementary materials that you can add to your project to provide context, related artifacts, and links to other materials. Resources can annotate specific passages of text, function as independent objects of exploration, and/ or be curated into collections by topic, section of text, or syllabus unit. There are ten resource kinds that you can add to a Manifold project:

Image
Video
Audio
File
Link
PDF
Document
Spreadsheet
Presentation
Interactive

This guide will walk you through the basics of adding resources to your project, placing resources in your text as annotations, and curating resources into collections on your home page. To learn more about the specific requirements of each file type and how to prepare resources, see the Preparing Resources section of our documentation. For more detailed information about interacting with and placing resources, see the Exploring and Placing Resources section of our documentation.

To add resources to your project, first go to the “Resources” tab in the backend of your project. To get to the backend of your project, go to cuny.manifoldapp.org. If you’re not logged in already, log in by clicking on the avatar in the upper right hand corner of the screen and then click on “Enter Admin Mode” at the top of the screen. If you do not see “Enter Admin Mode,” contact Matt Gold to have your account upgraded (see email provided above). Once you have entered Admin Mode, click on the title of the project whose homepage you would like to design. This will bring you to the backend of your project. Access the Resources tab by clicking on “Resources” in the menu that appears along the left side of the page.

Adding Resources to Your Project

To add Resources to a project one at a time, click the “Add a New Resource” button below the resources search bar.

The New Resource page will appear and provide you the option to choose which of the eight kinds of resources you’d like to add.

After selecting the resource type that you’d like to add, scroll down to add metadata information about the resource as well as the resource itself. The metadata fields vary depending on the resource kind. Generally, you’ll be prompted to provide a title, descriptions, and the actual file you are uploading as a resource. Only the title and resource file are required. There are more required fields for video, link, and interactive resource types, as described below.

After you’ve filled out the appropriate fields, click “Save and Continue.” Your resource has now been loaded, and you can add the resource as an annotation to your text or add it to a collection, as described below. More information about video, link, and interactive resources follows, but if you have already added your resource, you can skip to the “Exploring and Placing Resources” section below.

Video

Videos can be uploaded directly into Manifold or they can be streamed from YouTube and Vimeo. To stream a video from YouTube or Vimeo, click the slider for “Is This an Externally Linked Video?” When toggled on, two new fields appear: “Video ID” and “External Video Type.”

“Video ID” describes the unique identifier in the URL bar that is associated with the video in question. On YouTube, it will appear after “watch?v=” and before any string beginning with an ampersand “&”. In the following, the Video ID would be 3yfYetkMLPM:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwuMrd_Hgww

On Vimeo, the Video ID is the number following vimeo.com/. In this example, the Video ID would be 249096229:

https://vimeo.com/249096229

The “External Video Type” field is a dropdown used to select which service the video is hosted on: YouTube or Vimeo.

Link

Instead of a file to upload, “Link” resources require that you input the URL to the site you are using as a resource.

Interactive

When adding an interactive resource such as an interactive model or visualization, you will add the URL of the site where the resource lives along with the minimum width and height (in pixels) for the iFrame wrapper in which the resource will display. The minimum width and height help Manifold handle the iFrame responsively and determine how the content will render—inline or full screen—and whether it may be necessary to substitute the poster image, instead of the interactive element, in slideshows.

If you are unsure of the minimum width or height, leave those fields blank, and Manifold will calibrate the view based on the size of the reader’s screen size.

Exploring and Placing Resources

Now that you have added resources to your project, they live in your project’s resource library, which can be added to your homepage through the layout tab so that students can access all of your project’s resources in one place. You can also now annotate your text with your resource, and, if you like, group resources you have added into collections.

Placing Resources in Texts as Annotations

To place a resource in the text as an annotation to a specific passage, go the project’s front end. For published projects, you can add resources as long as you are logged in. If the project is still in Draft Mode, you can access the front end by clicking on “Preview” below the project’s name at the top of any page of the back end.

Navigate to the place in the text where you’d like the resource to be located and highlight the passage you’d like the resource to annotate. A drop-down menu will appear; click on “Resource.”

When you click Resource, a drawer will open from the right allowing you to select from any resource file that’s already been uploaded to that project. When you select your resource (or collection) a gray cube will be placed at the end of your cursor selection and a thumbnail of the resource will appear in the left margin. When you hover over either they will turn a shade of green, and when clicked a window will overlay the text previewing the resource or allowing you to interact with it, if it’s of a kind playable in the browser.

Working with Resource Collections

Resources can be curated into groupings or “collections.” Resource Collections can be useful if you’d like your students to be able to browse resources by topic, section of text, or syllabus unit. Resource Collections appear on the Resources content block of a project’s landing page, where their individual contents can be accessed and engaged with:

For details on how to place a Collection in a Text as an annotation, see the Reading Interface section of our documentation. This might be helpful if there is a group of resources you would like students to read alongside a particular passage or day’s reading. Placing the entire collection as an annotation allows you to avoid having to place each resource separately.

Creating a New Resource Collection

Resource Collections are created through the “Resource Collections” sidebar of your project’s backend.

To create a new Collection of resources, click the “Add a New Collection” button.

You will be prompted to enter a Title, Description, and upload a Cover Image for the new Collection. Only a Title is required at this point, and all three fields can be updated later.

The Cover Image should be prepared in a 9:4 ratio and saved as a GIF, JPEG, JPG, PNG, or SVG.

Once you hit Save and Continue your Collection will be created and you’ll be taken to the Collections page, denoted by two links in the menu along the left: General and Resources.

The “General” page allows you to modify the Title, Description, and Cover Image. The “Resources” page, discussed further in the following section, offers means by which to add different resources to the collection.

Adding Resources to a Collection

To add a Resource to a Collection, select the Collection you wish to edit from the list displayed on the Resource Collections page.

Then select Resources from the menu along the left hand side of the screen.

Here you will be shown a list of all the Resources that have been added to your project. If no Resources have been added, refer to the Adding Resources to Your Project section above before proceeding.

Next to each available Resource there will be a slider. Toggling a Resource’s slider to the right (so that green is showing on the slide) adds that Resource to the Collection.

Please be advised that using copyrighted material on Manifold is strictly prohibited. If you have questions about what can be used in a Manifold Project, please email manifold@gc.cuny.edu and we will be happy to schedule a time to meet with you to discuss.