Course structure

Be intentional in identifying and articulating the key elements of your course. These should include:

• learning outcomes
• assessment strategies
• types of learning activities

The first step to creating structure in any course is reflecting on and designing these pieces. Equally important is communicating these to students, most often in the course outline or syllabus.

Consider the overall layout of a course and how you will organize or "chunk" themes, concepts, and time within your course. Will you divide the course by concept? Unit? Week? What sections will you set up and what will you include in each section?

There are no rules about how to “chunk” course material and time, but you will want to have some sort of division. Chunking a course breaks it into manageable parts that are more digestible and more accessible. You have to decide what makes the most sense for your course material, expectations, timelines and student needs. Once you decide, be consistent and share this with your students.

Consider how you will schedule components of the course.

• What is the timeline for course components?
• When are assignment and exam deadlines?
• What are key dates in your course?
• How do these map onto the semester? (reading break, stat holidays etc.)

Map out the timeline of a course, and identify when activities and assignments will fall. Build in flexibility in your schedule. this will allow you to be flexible in cases of cancelled classes, student absence or if you need to spend extra time on a key concept. Let students know how you will handle changes to the course schedule. Having timelines visible to students helps them develop time management skills.

If your students are in a cohort program, consider talking to your colleagues about scheduling. Can you work together to ensure students don't have all their deadlines in the same weeks?

Consider developing a blueprint for communication. Key questions to consider include:

• How and when can students connect with an instructor?
• What is the turn-around time that students can expect when waiting to hear back from an instructor?
• What expectations and/or policies exist for respectful in-class communication between peers? With the instructor?

Guidelines can also be co-designed with students during the early stages of a course. Involving students gives them agency in defining appropriate and professional communication. This can result in greater understanding and buy-in.

These pieces culminate in the course outline or syllabus. This document structures and communicates:

• course content
• goals
• expectations
• timelines
• assessments
• policies

Breaking course content into meaningful pieces is important in all classes. In the online environment, this can be even more important. Visual structure is the first and most obvious cue to students in an online course. Poor organization can lead to memory overload or an inabilitty to process material. Inconsistent organization will confuse students and make it hard for them to navigate the course. Too much content in one section can be overwhelming.

Divide your content logically, but pay attention to how it looks. Course material should be in visually and cognitively digestible chunks. This supports student access and understanding of material. It will also reduce the amount of time you will need to spend supporting navigating your course.

Use the first module for information about the course. This is where you can include a welcoming introduction and an overview of the course. Your syllabus or course outline should be in this same module. You can also include links to student supports and campus resources. If your course includes online meetings or you use the Bookings tool for office hours, include those links in this module as well.

Students can search your VIULearn course by the titles in content. Give links and files clear, meaningful names to help students find content. This is especially helpful for the syllabus, assignment information and Teams links.

Use the hyperlink function within VIULearn to enable students to cross-access relevant material. For example, if you are referencing an assignment in a module, provide a link to the assignment information. If students need to reference a reading for an assignment, provide the link to that reading in the outline of the assignment. This helps students find and access material quickly within VIULearn.

Choose a naming convention that makes sense to you, and use it for all files, materials and activities.Concise titles that tell students what each content item is are best. Consider keywords like 'watch' and 'read' at the beginning of course material titles. This can help students make choices about what they look at when based on their environment.

Checklists offer a clear visual guide of what students needs to do. You can link to library resources and other materials outside VIULearn from the checklist. Students can mark off items as they complete them. This is a nice compliment to the automated content checking in VIULearn that will mark a content topic complete when a student opens it.

Checklists can be optional or required in VIULearn. You can also connect checklist items to release conditions for greater flexibility in course design. If you would like to use checklists in your course, we would love to talk to you about it. Email learnsupport@viu.ca to schedule a consultation.