8 Part D: Humanizing the Course Website and Learning Management System
8 Part D: Humanizing the Course Website and Learning Management System
“Having an assignment rubric early gives you a lot more time to figure out exactly what the professor is looking for. I have started assignments before without the rubric being released and it always end up being more work to change what I have already done to meet the rubric.” – Recent Religion graduate
Where possible, consult with students and your program about how to best layout your content. One of the biggest challenges for students is that every course site looks different, which creates a cognitive burden. Even if you can’t coordinate the layout of your sites, try to include things like a ‘Course Toolbox’ and ‘Course Roadmap.’ A toolbox is a spot can be approached as a ‘start here’ section of the course site. It can contain everything a student would need to know about navigating the site and where to find information. A course roadmap is a visual representation of the course and all the components. It can be a one stop for students to see what they have going on and due in your course every week. You can also include an FAQ section based on common questions you have received in the past or you can update this section in real-time throughout your course. Many templates are available online.
In practice, this can look like:
- Include a course road map on the landing page of the learning management system, and have it update as the course progresses. This roadmap should be a visual display, broken down weekly with details like: theme, readings, due dates, suggestions, and a reminder about the material fits into the grading structure of the course.
- At some universities, like Trent University, all course pages follow the same format. If this is not possible, do a run through of the website during the first lecture.
- Creating a concept map of your course can help learners visualize connections between topics and is a great planning tool for teachers as well. You can see over 100 example concept map syllabi at the Extend Activity Bank (and add your own!).
- If students have to click on a lecture link from within the learning management system, then have it at the top of the landing page so they don’t have to search for it each lecture.
- Break up the course schedule week by week, with milestones, activities, assignments, quizzes, and labs listed so that students can use it to keep on track.
- Every Friday, post an announcement with a list of things coming up the next week. The announcement can repeat all the information about the classes and provide relevant links so that students pressed for time know they can find the information they need on the announcements page.
- One Biology course reorganized their Learning Management System based upon student feedback. The students wanted week-by-week organization, with everything repeated in each week’s tab, so the course is now organized week-by-week, with repeated subheadings: classes, seminars, readings. Each of these tabs ha