VIULearn is a place for active and ongoing teaching and learning. In order to support the needs of the VIU community, there are several types of courses housed in VIULearn.
Official Courses
Academic and trades courses, as well as Professional Development and Training courses that are scheduled to have an online component are automatically created in VIULearn. Enrolment in these courses for instructors and students is also automatic with information imported from VIU systems every twelve hours.
Any changes to official courses made in official systems (instructor appointments, student enrolments etc.) will take one business day to process into VIULearn. If you don’t see a course you expect to see or if there are problems with the enrolments in your course in VIULearn, please contact learnsupport@viu.ca.
Development Courses
VIU employees who need to develop materials and who do not have an official course can request a Development Course. These manually created courses may be used for creating a course in advance of it being scheduled or to access and update a course that has not been offered in several years.
Development courses are not intended to be accessed by students. These spaces are designed to allow VIU employees to develop course materials or test elements of our learning management system. When the materials are ready to share with students, they should be copied into an official course space.
Hub Courses
VIU departments or groups who need an online space for students and employees to create an online community around a specific program or project can request a Hub course.
Hub courses can be used to share and collect information from students in a program when there is not an appropriate course where all students in the program could be reached. All students and instructors must be manually enrolled in the HUB course and the requesting user is responsible for maintaining the classlist.
HUB courses should be managed at a departmental level and should only be requested in consultation with your department chair. CIEL will include the department chair in any communications about HUB courses to help avoid duplication and confusion with these department or program wide initiatives.
If there are no course activities (quizzes, assignments, etc) your materials may be better suited for a website rather than a VIULearn Hub Course. If you are not sure what the best option is, please contact learnsupport@viu.ca
Master Courses
Master courses are intended to allow a department to keep a single, master copy of course content which can be copied into future versions of the course for an instructor to teach. Master courses, like Hubs, belong to a department and not an individual. Department chairs will be included in any communication about Master courses.
If you are an individual instructor and want to keep a master copy of your own course materials that you do not want shared with the rest of your department, you should request a Development course rather than a Master course.
Open Learning Courses
VIU employees or departments that offer not-for-credit training courses to the VIU community can request an Open Learning Course to allow VIU employees and students to register for and take the course asynchronously online in VIULearn.
Open Learning Courses are appropriate only where there is no fee for participation, there is no credit for completion, and there are no restrictions on who at VIU can and should access the content and activities. Enrolment of learners in an Open Learning Course is managed by individual learners through the Discover tool. Anyone with a VIU computer account can access the course and unenroll themselves when they no longer need access.
If there are no course activities (quizzes, assignments, etc) your materials may be better suited for a website rather than a VIULearn Open Learning course. If you are not sure what the best option is, please contact learnsupport@viu.ca
Managing a Course
Instructors in official courses and the person requesting a Development or Open Learning Course are solely responsible for managing their course. For Hub and Master courses, department chairs are ultimately responsible for making decisions about the course, though enrolled instructors may assist with some of the management tasks for these types of courses. Course management includes:
- Ensuring the class list reflects the group who should have access to the course.
- Ensuring content is current and reflective of the term/year or program components (e.g., remove all old documents, keep content current).
- Upload content that has the broadest range of accessibility for students of all abilities and disabilities.
- Organize and display content in a format that is readable and easily accessible by all participants.
- Backing up the course every now and then locally to a computer.
- Contacting CIEL to update the course contact person if a current contact person for a manual course leaves their position or wants to pass on management of the course to someone else.
CIEL staff are available to assist you with any problems you encounter. You can open a support ticket or request a one on one consultation by emailing learnsupport@viu.ca
Request a Development, Hub, or Open Learning Course:
To request a manually created course, please fill out the form linked below. When filling out the form, please provide a clear rationale for the course. Each request is reviewed by CIEL and our team may reach out to the listed contact person to request more information before determining the best option for your needs. Requests that are better suited to another supported VIU technology may be rejected. If CIEL does not approve a manual course request, we will do our best to recommend an alternative that will address the need laid out in your request.