VIULearn is a place for active and ongoing teaching and learning. To support the needs of the VIU community, there are several types of courses housed in VIULearn.
Official courses
These are the courses you use to teach at VIU. Official courses are automatically created and you do not need to contact us to request them. Official courses are created for:
- academic courses
- trades courses
- professional development and training courses that have an online component
Students and instructors in these courses are automatically enrolled in their course. Automatic enrollments are processed every 12 hours. You should have access to the course by the day after it is set up and your enrollment is entered in official VIU systems. 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 are course spaces manually created by CIEL. A development course is not intended to have students enrolled. You can use a development course to build activities and course content that will then be copied into an official course space.
Hub courses
VIU departments can request a Hub course when they need a space outside of an offiical course. Hubs are an online space for students and employees to create community around a specific program or project. Generally, you should only use a hub course when you need to use the activites in VIULearn. For example, if you need to collect forms from all first year students in a program, a hub may be the right option. If you want a place to share informaiton out to students in a program but do not need to collect work, a hub is likely not the right choice.
All students and instructors must be manually enrolled in the HUB course. The requesting department is responsible for maintaining the classlist.
HUB courses are managed at a departmental level and you should consult with your chair before requestin a hub. CIEL will include the department chair in any communications about HUB courses. This helps avoid duplication and confusion with these department or program wide initiatives.
If there are no course activities 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
If your department keeps a standardized version of course content, they can maintain this version of the course as a master in VIULearn. Master courses allow a department to keep a single copy of a coursethat instructors can then copy into their official courses. 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 copy of your material, you can request a development course or export a backup.
Open learning courses
Open learning courses are for not-for-credit training courses. These courses are open for all students and employees to take free of charge.
Individuals can sign up for open learning courses through Discover. 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 your materials may be better suited for a website. If you are not sure what the best option is, please contact learnsupport@viu.ca.
Managing a course
CIEL maintains records of who owns manually created courses. This allows us to alert you of changes and seek approval is somone requests access to a manually created course. The person who requests a development or open learning course becomes the owner of that course. For Hub courses and Master courses, the chair of the requesting department is the owner.
In all cases, the owner is responsible for course management. Course management includes:
- Keeping the class list up to date by adding or removing users.
- Ensuring content is current and reflective of the term, year and program components.
- Meeting accessibility needs of students and staff who need to access the content.
- Backing up the course
- Contacting CIEL if course management is being passed to someone new or a person with a manual course is leaving VIU
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 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. CIEL reviews request and may reach out 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 recommend an alternative that will address the need laid out in your request.