Each instructor at VIU will have their own style for organizing and sharing online course content within VIULearn. However, the basic structure of every VIULearn course is the same in order to help you find important course materials and activities no matter which course you access.
This page is designed to give you brief overview of what you will see in VIULearn and how to navigate to your course content. To explore these elements in greater depth, you can take the VIULearn Student Orientation self-paced course. If you are having trouble navigating a specific course, you will want to connect with your instructor to learn how they have laid out the course content inside VIULearn.
Access VIULearn Courses
When you first access a VIULearn course from your My Home page, you will see the Course Home page. Every course homepage has the same basic layout.
Course Navigation bar
Directly above the banner on your course homepage you will see a navigation bar with links to Course Home, Content, Assessment, Communication, Help, and VIUTube. This navigation bar will be constant throughout all pages of the course so you can jump from one area of the course to another. Some instructors will link everything you need within the Content area of the course, while others may expect you to use this navigation bar to locate Assignments, Quizzes, and Discussions.
If you get disoriented within a course at any time, you can click Course Home to return to the course homepage.
Announcements
In the main part of the page, you will see announcements from your instructor. Instructors at VIU may use announcements regularly through the course to keep you updated on changes, upcoming events or activities, or to notify you of a cancelled class or office hour. Other instructors may not choose to use announcements at all, preferring to communicate with you in class or through email.
Updates
The updates widget on your course homepage is there to alert you if there are course activities that might need your attention. Please note that these are automatically generated system notifications. Depending on whether your instructor uses dates or other restrictions to limit access to activities, you may see all activities for an entire course referenced in Updates on day one of the semester or you may only see current activities.
Click on the blue links in Updates to navigate directly to the relevant part of the course. Updates will alert you to available quizzes and assignments as well as unread feedback and discussion posts.
Bookmarks
You can add bookmarks to pages within Content to easily find these pages at a later time. Any page you bookmark will appear as a link under Bookmarks on your homepage. No one but you can see your bookmarks. You can click on a bookmark link to go directly to that page in course content. When viewing a content topic in your course, you can find the bookmark option in the upper right of the page.
Calendar
Unlike the rest of the tools on your Course Home, the Calendar tool will (by default) show you dates for all of your courses in one place. You can use filters to determine which courses you want to see in the Calendar. However, these filters will affect your whole account so exercise caution when hiding courses in the calendar if this is something you rely on to know when there are upcoming due dates or events.
If you use a calendar on your phone or computer and want to add your VIULearn calendar to that device, you can subscribe to your calendar with the steps below:
- On your course homepage, click Calendar
- In the Calendar views area, click Settings
- Select the Enable Calendar Feeds check box
- In the Calendar views area, click Subscribe
- From the drop-down list, select which calendar you want to subscribe to, or select All Calendars and Tasks, or Tasks Only
- Copy the URL provided and paste it into the subscription URL field in your chosen calendar
Content
Content is the main area of all courses in VIULearn. This is where your instructor can create and upload files to share with you. Depending on your instructor, you may also find links to activities you need to complete in the Content area.
Access Content
To access the course Content, click Content in the course navigation bar. On the left you will see a sidebar with a number of links including another way to access your Bookmarks and a Course Schedule link that will show you calendar items for just this course.
Under the Table of Contents label on the left-hand sidebar, you will see a list of the modules in your course. Modules act like folders to organize course content. Your instructor may choose to organize content by topic, chapter, week, or some other method. Clicking on any of these modules will load the links for everything in that module on the right-hand side, the main panel area for course Content.
To access a content topic, click on the blue title link on the right side of the page. When you click on a topic to open, read or complete it, you enter Reading View. There a few different ways to navigate in reading view:
- When you are viewing a Topic, you can use the Previous or Next buttons at the top or bottom right corners of a page to move to the next topic in a module or, if you are at the end of a module, to the next module.
- You can also use the tab in the top left corner of the screen to open the module preview. You can use the Previous or Next buttons to scroll through available modules, and click directly on the topic you want to access to jump directly to it.
To learn more about the ways you can move through content in VIULearn, please check out our VIULearn Student Orientation course.
Search Content
If you are having trouble finding a content item in your course, you can use the Search Topics box on the main Content page to search for a topic. This search will look for content items with a title or description that contains your search term. The search does not search inside the content items themselves. If you aren't able to find something in course content using search or by navigating to the module you expected to see that content in, please contact your instructor for help finding the material.