A 5-Part Self-Guided Series To Get Everyone Started on the OpenLab
Part 4 of 5: Planning your Semester, Pt. 1
We hope that Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 of the OpenLab Summer Series have helped you get ready to plan your semester in Part 4!
In this installment, we suggest two tasks to guide faculty in planning for the fall semester. Both tasks help faculty customize their OpenLab course site to communicate with their students.
Before you begin further customizing your course site, ask yourself:
- What information do students need from me to be successful this semester?
- How would I like students to communicate with me this semester?
- What kind of class dialogue would I like to foster?
Task 1: Explore Student-Instructor Communication
- Get familiar with the different types of communication your course site can facilitate: Instructors can communicate information through pages, posts, and comments. Students can’t write pages, but can write posts and comments.
- Pages are for static information, such as the course syllabus, schedule, grading information, and contact information–the kinds of content students will find in the Course Info section of the course site.
- Posts show up at the top of the site, generate a notification via email to all members of the course, and pop your course to the top of the Courses section on the home page and Courses page on the OpenLab. You can assign categories to posts to organize them into category archives–when you add category archives to your menu, it makes it easy to find content, such as all the Class Agendas (posted by the instructor), or all the work for Project 1 (posted by students and the instructor). A category archive for Discussions creates a suggested space for students to hold class dialogue online. A first assignment is suggested for instructors in which students introduce themselves to each other, and are encouraged to respond to each other’s introductions.
- Comments can generate dialogue within a site. Depending on the settings you choose, anyone can write a comment (that the instructor can approve or not), which show up below a page or post. Comments can be threaded, creating the opportunity for more discussion among students and the instructor. They can also include links and images. Assignments can be designed to take advantage of the openness of comments–whether by asking students to comment on a post before they even have OpenLab accounts, or by inviting students to comment on work on other sites throughout the OpenLab. Comments can also be useful for feedback and grades on student work. (Note that FERPA protects student record privacy, and student work should not be graded publicly.)
- Professors can share surveys as posts on the home page to gather information about students in the course, or even to collect student work. These surveys are powered by a plugin called Gravity Forms.
Task 2: Customize the Pages on your Course
- Prepare and gather your course materials for your site, keeping reading ease and accessibility in mind. These materials convey information from you to your students, and include:
- Your syllabus
- Your contact information
- Your grading policy/ grading rubrics
- Your course schedule.
- Update the pages on your course site with these materials!
- If you have course readings that are available online, decide now how you will link to these readings from your OpenLab site. Please make sure to read our copyright guidelines as you do this.
- Are your readings freely available online? Can you provide links in your syllabus/ class agendas/ course schedule?
- Are your readings large PDF files? If so, 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.
- Are 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.
In our final installment, we’ll focus on further facilitating communication on your course site and on finishing touches.
