8 Part D: Humanizing the Course Website and Learning Management System

“Having an assignment rubric early gives you a lot more time to figure out exactly what the professor is looking for. I have started assignments before without the rubric being released and it always end up being more work to change what I have already done to meet the rubric.” – Recent Religion graduate

Where possible, consult with students and your program about how to best layout your content. One of the biggest challenges for students is that every course site looks different, which creates a cognitive burden. Even if you can’t coordinate the layout of your sites, try to include things like a ‘Course Toolbox’ and ‘Course Roadmap.’ A toolbox is a spot can be approached as a ‘start here’ section of the course site. It can contain everything a student would need to know about navigating the site and where to find information. A course roadmap is a visual representation of the course and all the components. It can be a one stop for students to see what they have going on and due in your course every week. You can also include an FAQ section based on common questions you have received in the past or you can update this section in real-time throughout your course. Many templates are available online.

In practice, this can look like:

• Include a course road map on the landing page of the learning management system, and have it update as the course progresses. This roadmap should be a visual display, broken down weekly with details like: theme, readings, due dates, suggestions, and a reminder about the material fits into the grading structure of the course.
• At some universities, like Trent University, all course pages follow the same format. If this is not possible, do a run through of the website during the first lecture.
• Creating a concept map of your course can help learners visualize connections between topics and is a great planning tool for teachers as well. You can see over 100 example concept map syllabi at the Extend Activity Bank (and add your own!).
• If students have to click on a lecture link from within the learning management system, then have it at the top of the landing page so they don’t have to search for it each lecture.
• Break up the course schedule week by week, with milestones, activities, assignments, quizzes, and labs listed so that students can use it to keep on track.
• Every Friday, post an announcement with a list of things coming up the next week. The announcement can repeat all the information about the classes and provide relevant links so that students pressed for time know they can find the information they need on the announcements page.
• One Biology course reorganized their Learning Management System based upon student feedback. The students wanted week-by-week organization, with everything repeated in each week’s tab, so the course is now organized week-by-week, with repeated subheadings: classes, seminars, readings. Each of these tabs have links to the relevant drop boxes, links to other resources, all in the order that the student would need to access it, and also in other spots all chunked together for quick searching.
• One instructor developed an asynchronous study tool for each of the larger test-like assessments, which is super fun and very popular. Being asynchronous means that it is far more accessible than schedule review classes or drop-in sessions. The way that it works, students are actively learning and supporting each other in learning at the same time.
• The syllabus can be a “living document” that is collaboratively adapted and iterated on throughout the course to reflect learning and curiosity.
• Create a course trailer students can see before joining the course. Make next year’s course trailer with this year’s students.
• Intentionally add some opportunity for student to student interaction (other than discussion boards), perhaps using tools like Padlets, wikis, even a general collaboration space like Teams. LMS are designed around the assumption that the teacher provides content which the student receives, with very little chance to connect with each other. But this can be worked around intentionally.
• Use as much plain language as possible and be very clear regarding expectations for assignments and guidelines/plans for the week’s lecture.
• Make sure that, if assignment guidelines are listed in numerous places (like a syllabus as well as the submission page), they match and there isn’t more information in one compared to the other.
• Review your course page and documents for accessibility. This can be done using the accessibility checkers that are available for most LMS and for MS products. Follow accessible document design guidelines. If you don’t know what that is, reach out to your educational developers or instructional designers (if you have them at your campus) to support you.
• Vet tools that will be used in the course for accessibility purposes. Use tools that have bee suggested by your IT/EdTech support team. If you want to use another tool, reach out to your campus support team to ensure the tool would work for your students in an accessible manner.
• Add captions to videos you are uploading. If it is lecture video, check the captions to see if they are accurate (especially if you are teaching in a field with specific terminology). If the captions are not accurate, see if they can be edited for accuracy. The same goes for uploading audio: have a transcript available.
• If you are uploading images, alt-text your images with a description that would allow those who use screen readers to have the same information as those who do not. This is particularly important for graphs and charts.
• Ensure each weekly module has a consistent look and feel. Use design principles similar to those utilized in physical spaces that are applied to (what can be) complex digital spaces to humanize the experience for students.
• Use accessible headings, colour, icons, shapes, text features and imagery are to identify a digital space as unique. Digital spaces within your course have a unique feel – and students automatically know where they are.
• Encourage division of long-term goals into short-term objectives.
• Demonstrate the use of hand-held or computer-based scheduling tools (i.e. to reach goal).
• Use prompts or scaffolds for visualizing desired outcome.
• Use the learning management system’s calendar feature on the homepage to help students keep track of deadlines.
• Create checklists or schedules to communicate expectations.
• Pre-populate and release announcements at consistent times (e.g., “Monday Morning Announcement”).
• Use release conditions available in learning management system to scaffold and support learning more effectively.
• Communicate level of difficulty and estimated time by utilizing the description section within the learning management system – do not just put a link to a video – provide contextualization and how it ties to the course – a reason “why”.
• You may also include a statement on Accessibility and Universal Design on a widget on the home page, such as: “I am committed to increasing the accessibility of teaching this course, and have integrated Universal Design for Learning principles into its design. Read more about the accessibility and universal design for learning features of this course…”