Building your course in an LMS
Outline of an online course
There are basic items found in every online course. The order suggested is from a typical course build and offers a simple, linear approach to learning. Organize your materials in the way that works best for your course.
Most courses will contain the following information and sections:
• home page to introduce the course
• instructor announcements
• course syllabus, calendar, and gradebook
• list of folders or sections that represent the weeks or modules of a course, including pages of content, discussions, assignments, links, quizzes, and any other relevant information
Course essentials checklist
Now that you have the basic online course structure, think about what you have and what you’ll need to create. Use the following checklist to identify the specific elements you need for your course. Explore the checklist for more information, additional resources, and how-tos.
Once your course essentials are identified, take a closer look at the content and consider whether or not to modify how you deliver it for digital instruction.
See digital solutions and implementation tips.
LMS instructions & resources
The following LMS tools are what you’ll need to master to complete the course essentials checklist.
Announcements
While email is the most direct way to communicate with individual students, instructor announcements is the tool on your LMS that is best used for whole class communication. By posting here, students see your message on the LMS and get it delivered directly to their institutional email.
In the online environment, announcements let you communicate important, class-wide information and establish a sense of presence with your students. Use announcements to:
- welcome students to the online space
- communicate when and how students can expect to hear from you during the course
- post wellness checks for your students
- remind students about upcoming deadlines
- provide recaps, highlights, or summaries of material
- post resources such as files, assignments, and links to relevant materials, including your syllabus
Syllabus, links, and uploading files
The easiest way to share content digitally is to upload the files to the LMS and then link to the specific file. Depending on the LMS, a link can be created directly on a menu system or within a weekly folder structure. The goal is for you to avoid developing more advanced HTML pages and instead simply upload a docx, pptx, jpg, pdf, or other data file.
Think about the things students need to access that you usually hand out or view during class. These items might include:
- course syllabus
- PowerPoints
- reading materials or handouts
With something like your syllabus, it’s imperative that students find this document quickly and can return to it easily. We recommended uploading it to a general area like the home page of your course.
As you make note of the files you need to upload, is there anything in your syllabus that students would need if they don’t have access to the hard copy of the syllabus?
Adding, deleting, or editing weeks/modules
Breaking up your course into logical “chunks” such as weeks or modules helps students navigate the course and reduces their cognitive load, especially in an unknown, online environment.
If the course shell you’re working on doesn't already have weeks/modules created for you, we recommended that you create these manually as a way of logically organizing your course and chunking your content. Within each section you can add your corresponding lectures, supplemental content, discussions, assignments, and quizzes.
Asynchronous discussions
Adding an asynchronous discussion to your course is an easy way to get students to work together and to encourage both formative and summative material. Since the discussion exists online, students can answer at any time as long as they’re within your expectations for the discussion time frame.
Consider the following when designing a discussion:
- provide a discussion prompt/question that promotes as much of a unique response as possible from every student, or design the discussion using LMS features that prevent students from seeing other students’ posts until they post their own (refer to Q&A discussion in Moodle, Post-First in most other LMS platforms)
- set clear expectations on what a good discussion post looks like
- decide whether the discussion is graded or non-graded
- monitor the discussion for fairness and accuracy, and to stimulate debate
Assignments
Every LMS has numerous ways for students to submit material for grading. You’ll need to decide how much of the LMS you want to use to create assignments and graded work and where you can leverage different forms of evaluation.
Here are some non-LMS options:
- an open-book exam where students submit answers to an online dropbox
- a presentation delivered via live synchronous software like Zoom, CollaborateVideo, WebEx, Adobe Connect, etc.
- a recorded presentation that is submitted to an online dropbox
- a continuation of assignments that existed face to face but are submitted online for grading
If you do decide to leverage the LMS, here are LMS-specific resources for creating assignments.
Assessments
Much like assignments, you may be able to avoid using the LMS quiz tool by having students submit a document rather than complete a virtual quiz. Consider alternatives to traditional testing to ease the amount of course design you may have to do. Alternatives may include:
- portfolios
- writing assignments
- a discussion assignment with a rubric
- I-search papers
If you do decide to leverage the LMS, here are LMS-specific resources for creating quizzes.
Gradebook
Fully managing your class grades within the LMS requires that every assignment has a graded value associated with it. If you don’t plan to manage your gradebook from the LMS, this process isn’t necessary.
If you do plan on using the online gradebook, here are common features that can help you manage grades:
- The gradebook is the final place where grades can be adjusted but most grading features are only available in the activity itself.
- Gradebooks are best constructed with weights placed on categories.
• Graded items can take on any value or a percentage of the course total.
• Categories will automatically assign values to items within it based on the total category weight.
• It’s easiest to construct a gradebook if each item is scored out of 100 and the instructor lets the weights dictate overall performance.
- Graded items can be hidden to prevent students from receiving overall feedback and grades too early.
- You can export and import the gradebook to allow for offline grading.
Adding and editing content
Students appreciate when the material found in the syllabus matches the weekly activities found in their course. Consistency across an online course is the key to maximizing a positive learning environment.
If you need to create content directly in the LMS, with a little patience it’s easy to add and edit pages. When adding content directly, be consistent with naming conventions and give content links descriptive names (don’t make students guess what the content is).
Adding page content to your course
Modifying text within the text editor
Embedding images into your text editor
Adding links to online websites and media
Calendar
The LMS calendar is a useful tool for communicating assignments and due dates.
Calendar notifications:
- can alert you and students of any past, current, or upcoming activities that have due dates
- are tied directly to the user’s institutional email and notification system, ensuring that students are aware they have due dates
- can be exported to common digital email systems like Microsoft® Outlook, Gmail™, and more, to keep you and students informed about due dates outside the LMS