The Life-Changing Magic of Having an Organized Course

Okay, so this isn't exactly Marie Kondo, but the principles of building a tidy, organized course that is easy to navigate are important. And they might spark a little bit of joy.

Tip 1: Tidy

• Limit the links on your left navigation bar Links to an external site. to only the most necessary. A student can still see assignments, files, and discussions via the modules even if the tabs aren’t visible to them.
  • Why? Limiting the paths students can take to get to an item you want them to complete or interact with reduces the risk of students becoming confused and lost.
• If you imported a bunch of pages, assignments, quizzes, or files from another course, delete the ones you don't plan on using, or unpublish (hide) the ones you haven't touched yet. This reduces your confusion.
• Set your course home page Links to an external site.. 
• Give assignments unique, easy to find names.
• Separate assignments into groups Links to an external site. and weight them Links to an external site..
• Set due dates and availability for assignments.
• When applicable, attach rubrics to assignments Links to an external site..
• Set your grading policy Links to an external site.: automatically or manually posted.

Tip 2: Visualize the destination

• Give your students a clear sense of where to start, such as a Start Here module and a Course Tour.
• Clearly point your students toward places they can find help with Canvas tasks, like the BSTEC 99 Canvas class, the Student Orientation, and the ITS helpdesk.
• Validate your course links Links to an external site. to make sure there aren't any broken ones. Make sure your external links are active too.
• Decide how you'll organize your modules. It should be easy for students to discern the order in which they need to complete tasks.
• Be predictable. Give your modules regular, repeated patterns.

Tip 3: Determine if an item sparks joy

This might be a stretch, but hang with me here. Rather than sparking overwhelming delight, simply consider whether each item in your course is absolutely necessary to include, and that each assessment builds in a very concrete way toward your course outcomes.

You and your students are in an unprecedented situation. Everyone's bandwidth is pretty taxed. Remember our guiding principles: 

1. Good enough is good enough. We are going to do our very best to help students succeed, as always, and be sensible about what we can accomplish.
2. We need to demonstrate care for our students and ourselves. We can get through this, together, if we take care of ourselves and each other.

Tip 4: Tidy by category

It can be overwhelming to build a course from scratch or to revamp one you've used before but didn't anticipate being fully online. It might help to organize your thoughts by category using the PLAID criteria. Work on one thing at a time:

• How am I organizing the course?
• What's in my course, and is the content aligned with the course outcomes?
• How am I communicating with students, and how are they communicating with each other?
• Is my content accessible?

Tip 5: Tidy in order

• Prioritize. Strategize. Use the Rule of 2s to guide you.
• Don't feel like you have to build your course in its entirety in a week. Focus on the first couple of weeks, get them published, and then you have something to build on.