Previous
Next Page

Course Welcome and Core Content

The “welcome” area at the top of your course page provides students with the most pertinent course information. You can also use section drop-downs or blocks as alternative layout ideas, so long as this information is still appearing near the top of your course page.

Requisite information includes:

  • Course Outline link
  • Instructor bio and contact information
  • Course Syllabus and other important course information

Optional content:

Your second step is to confirm the required default content is provided at the top of your course homepage.

There are three required components:

  • Course outlines are the College's contract with the students taking a course and were identified as a mandatory component of a course page (as per Doug McLachlan, VP Academic, 2014).

  • To avoid problems in the event of a grade challenge, the Evaluation and Assessment in the course outline should provide the basic structure for a course grade book.

  • The course outline is linked to the official version on SharePoint. If the link is broken, this is the URL https://outlines.cotr.bc.ca/pdf/courses/course-outline-AAAA-123-Fall-2024.pdf; update the highlighted part of the URL with the course ID information.
  • You can locate your Course Outline here: https://cotr.bc.ca/courses
  • The announcements forum appears automatically in all courses - it is a guaranteed mass-announcement tool which alerts students automatically
  • You are encouraged to leave it in place in the Welcome area, but if you have a clear alternative for announcements - ie. in Microsoft Teams or via Email you may consider one of the two following options:
  • To Hide when not in use;
    • move the element to the bottom of your course and hide it from students if you will not be using this forum to communicate with students
    • remove the block element from the course so it is not visible to students
  • To permanently remove:
    • go into your Settings and adjust course Appearance settings. 
    • set number of announcements available to 0
    • delete the element from your course
  • Instructor information including name, office hours, preferred contact methods and times, etc. are key elements of the course Welcome 
  • Ensure this information is up--to-date for the new semester, including any date or time changes
  • This is particularly important if you are changing instructors for a course! 

Location, Location, Location

  • Your instructor information should be presented in detail in a document format, whether a Moodle Page or Book element or an uploaded PDF. However, you can also display the essential elements of this info in short form in other locations on the course page.
  • See our "Meet your Instructor" block setup for more details.
  • Ensure the Course Syllabus is up-to-date and relevant to the course design you are presenting to students. 
  • You might want to create "Course Info" block or element that summarizes key highlights outside the core Syllabus document
    • ie. Class location or Teams link, class hours, short-link to syllabus document
  • Additionally, consider developing a virtual resource such as a Graphic Syllabus. 

See layout options for advanced Welcome formatting settings.
Previous
Next Page