Course Information Documents

Whether you are teaching a fully online course or a traditional course, students will benefit from you including a set of course information documents in the Learning Management System for them to access.  The documents take advantage of the everywhere/anytime nature of the web as well as afford student with quick answers to the college and course questions.
 
There are several benefits to using a consistent set of Course Information Documents, including:

• Uniform interface across classes helps students focus on the content that is important and not navigating the content.
• A uniform set of course information documents can help dismiss anxiety created from having several different styles and in some cases, no common style at all.
• These offer Another location to access information to assist with the students’ success
• They also supply a space the students can access the syllabus whenever they want, regardless of the time of day.

The following File (Course Information Documents) offers several boilerplate pages for you to use. They include:

1. The Instructor's Contact Information – let the students know how to contact you and a little bit about you.  You personalize this page, and add an image of you or something appropriate for the course (By the way, did you know that students are significantly more likely to give instructors a positive review if they have an introduction page with a short video introduction.)
2. Course Description and Policies – this is where you can remind students of the prerequisites and course policies (such as a late policy)
3. We have two excellent e-books that you will not have to edit at all:

1.  College Policies
2. Academic and Technical Support, offer:
• Updated information  about the college,
• Help desk numbers,
• Crisis hotlines,
• Student Code of Conduct, including Academic Integrity
• Computer Use and Netiquette rules
• Accessibility help and more
• The can be downloaded as a PDF.

4. Course Goals and Grading – let the students see it in a plain in a simple spot. You will want to edit this.  Here is a tip – if you create a chart in WORD, and copy the entire chart, it pastes with perfect formatting into Blackboard!
5. Syllabus & Schedule – simply remove the present files and upload new ones, It is best to upload these as PDFs as they are viewable inline while still offering a download option.

An added benefit to the boilerplate files is that that this upload will include a special playlist feature that will offer students access to a video playlist to assist them in Blackboard.

So please take a few minutes and import the course information documents into your class.  You can then edit them with the information that will customize the documents to reflect your course. Having a centralized set of information documents with a common interface for students and where they can access a printable syllabus helps everyone succeed.