A 5-Part Self-Guided Series To Get Everyone Started on the OpenLab
Part 4 of 5: Customize the Pages and Posts on your Course
Each course comes with built-in content to help instructors get started, whether you choose the template for a more interactive site or a more informational site. As you get your site ready for students to join, you’ll want to customize the content that’s there.
Pages
As you prepare and gather your course materials to update the pages on your course site (syllabus, contact information, grading policy, and course schedule), you’ll want to keep reading ease and accessibility in mind to effectively and accessibly convey information from you to your students.
- You’ll need to consider if your materials accessible. Can someone using an assistive device access all of the information on your syllabus and in other course materials? The OpenLab has compiled materials to help you make your work accessible.
- If your course readings are available online, decide where you will include links to these readings on your OpenLab site. Please make sure to read our copyright guidelines as you do this.
- Are your readings or other course materials large files? We recommend using an external hosting service to host these files, such as Dropbox, Office 365 or other hosting service provided by the college. You can provide your students with instructions on how to access this service on your OpenLab site.
Posts
Just as with pages, when you work with posts, you’ll also want to keep these ideas about accessibility, readability, and copyright in mind:
- Note the function of these posts. Unlike pages, which you use to publish your syllabus and course policies, posts are used to convey dynamic content, new information that will be added throughout the semester.
- Read through the posts that come pre-loaded in new courses. By default, these are published, but you can edit them as needed or switch them to drafts.
- Note that these pre-written template posts have different categories. These categories can be accessed from the main navigation menu and can always be edited.
- Edit each of these posts, adapting them to your course’s needs. You may decide that you don’t need some of the posts, in which case you can delete them, or don’t need them yet, in which case you can switch them to drafts.
These posts and pages that come with your site can serve as models as you add new pages and posts to your site throughout the semester. In the final Summer Series installment, we’ll consider comments, which are another way for students and instructors to interact throughout the semester.
Photo Credit: “Flower on the Street #1” by Thomas Leuthard via Flickr under the license CC BY 2.0.
