Don't assume students will be able to navigate your course or modules and identify important elements. Include items to orient students so they understand your flow and emphasis with the course content.

Course and Modules: What Not To Do

Course Overview: Don't assume students will be able to look at your online course and readily identify important information, important assignments, or how to best navigate in your course without specific information orienting them and showing them the big picture.

Think about your first day of class with students in a face-to-face course. Typically, you would provide students with a course overview and review important syllabus items with students. You might talk about the timeline of assignments and any important projects or finals. This needs to occur in an online course, too!

Module/Lesson Overviews: This same concept goes for your course modules. Don't assume modules are self-explanatory or that readings from your textbook will provide enough context for the items you place in your modules.

When introducing a new topic or lesson in a face-to-face course, typically there is discussion surrounding the topic, ensuring students understand the big picture, how the topic or lesson fits in with the content, how it ties back to previous information, etc. This crucial information needs to be in an online course, too!

Course and Modules: Do This Instead

Course Orientation Page - Highlight important course information and place it in a Course Overview or Orientation page. Look at your syllabus and pull out important pieces of information to include on the page, too. Place the page in an introductory module. Point students to the page via announcements or some other means of communication to ensure they review the information. Here is an example: Course Orientation Page
Module Pages - Include at least an introduction page and readings/resources page in each module to ensure students understand the focus of the module, how the content ties in with the big picture, to get them started with the content, and to convey the module objectives. Include more content pages, as needed. Here are some examples: Introduction Page and Readings/Resources Page