Feedback from students during the Fall term has demonstrated that course planning/mapping is an essential step in preparing to offer a course online. Many instructors (and their students) benefitted significantly from taking the time, before beginning development, to map out how the course will be structured, how learning outcomes will be assessed, and what content & activities will guide student learning within each module/unit. By planning the contents of each unit or module, we can ensure that we are only including essential content and avoid overloading students with too many items to view or too many assessments to submit.

A Course Plan Template document (Course Plan Template) is one way to map out how you will organize your course and what resources you plan to include in each unit or module. This will help provide a clear picture of what the course will include from start to finish and will help simplify things when it comes time to create content. The first page of the template document provides an example of a completed plan for a module/unit and the subsequent pages have blank placeholders to fill in. You should feel free to use another template or method if you wish – this document is only one way of doing it.

Once you’ve created a course plan or updated course outline, the ETD office can assist in creating placeholders for your content within a Brightspace template. Email your documents to etd@dal.ca and we can help get your course space set up.