The new academic year is approaching. The courses for 2021/22 have been created in Learn containing a templated structure, some pre-populated content, and content fed from Theon. Your course is now ready to be populated with custom content ahead of the start of the semester.
This is an overview guide to highlight core tasks required to get your course ready for start of term with links to more detailed instructions. Use this as a quick reference guide.
Who has access to my course?
When the course is created from EUCLID the Course Organiser and Course Secretary are auto-enrolled with Instructor privileges on the course.
Any other Instructor who needs access to the course will need to be added manually
Adding a user to your Learn course
Students will not be enrolled via EUCLID until week beginning 12 July. You have the ability to hide the course entirely from student view, or if you prefer you can hide sections of your site until you are happy to make it visible.
Informatics courses are created with Guest access by default. This allows you to share links to courses to staff and students regardless of Learn login or enrolment.
Building your course
Course Readiness
Your course template will be pre-populated. The main areas for immediate attention will be the following:
- Add Welcome message
- Check Course Information
- Add Course Materials
- Review & Edit Assessment Information
Course Structure – Components to be completed
Video: Course Structure Walkthrough
Some of the course structure will be pre-populated from DRPS by an automated process in August. You may see some variable references in your course structure. This should remain unedited as these variables will be replaced with the appropriate content. ILTS will send communication when the automated process has been completed as you will be required to check the content for accuracy.
| Welcome Message | The welcome message should be used to introduce your students to the course by providing helpful information important to the course, such as: an introduction to the teaching staff with a bio, photo or video message. |
| Learning Outcomes | All learning outcomes for the course should be added in this section (as defined in Degree Regulations & Programmes of Study), if they are not already pre-populated to provide your students with what they should expect to learn throughout the course.
Learning Outcomes will be auto-populated from DPRS prior to the start of term. |
| Course Summary | Check Information pulled from Theon for accuracy |
| Course Outline | A course outline should be created to provide students with an overview of the course as detailed within the DRPS if this has not been automatically populated.
Learning Outcomes will be auto-populated from DPRS prior to the start of term. |
| Timetable | The timetable link should be to the Outlook 365 calendar for all users. |
| Handbook | If you have a course handbook, this should be located in this page of the template. |
| Assessment Information | The Assessment area has been designed to contain all resources and information relating to assessment and feedback. To support students with this, consider including relevant detail that could support students when submitting any assessments or assignments (i.e. important dates to be aware of, which common marking scheme is used within your School, what the assignment submission and assessment criteria are etc.)
Assessment information is also pulled from Theon, check these details for accuracy. Some of the Assessment Information will be auto-populated from DPRS prior to the start of term. |
| Assessment Submission | Create a Folder for each Coursework to provide information for each specific piece of assessed work. |
Course Build / Course Copy
You have the choice to copy sections of a previous course iteration into your new instance; or you can choose to build your course from scratch each year.
Course Copy
You can choose to copy your course in bulk or copy items/folders from one course to another. Take some time to consider which approach would be best suited to your course. The following pages offer guidance on the process of performing a copy.
Copying Course Content
Course Copying, Backup and Restore | The University of Edinburgh
Course Structures
We ask that you upload any content related to your course within the Course Materials section of the course template. You are welcome to structure your content as you wish, there are 3 main approaches for structuring content:
- Timetable/Schedule
- Weekly Folder
- Topic Based folders
A combination of approaches is acceptable and may help students find material more easily when accessing material at different stages of the course.
Signposting for students
Course Patterns
Course Homepage
When a user selects to launch a Learn course, they are taken to the course’s home page. In Blackboard, this is called the course ‘entry point’. By default, this is set to the Welcome page. However, you can change this – indeed we recommend changing this after Week 1 of Semester start.
How to change the home page for your Learn course
Support
You will find additional instructions and links to some of the guidance within your learn template in the notes for instructors which appear as part of the template.
You are welcome to log any queries about developing your course to lt-support@inf.ed.ac.uk where one of the ILTS team will assist you.
Ahead of the start of semester and the first few weeks of teaching ILTS offer a drop-in support service which will be advertised on Teaching Staff mailing lists.
