Building your class is a five step process. The first step is to enter information about your course. In the second step you will create units or topic areas. In the third step content item are added to the course. In the fourth step you will add those content items to the areas of the course you created in step one. The last step is to add course tools. Click on any of the five steps above to go to that step or just scroll down.

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Step 1: Creating Your Course Information

To begin building your course you need to enter the author part of the course by clicking the (1.) Author tab. From here you can create and modify information about the course, change the look and feel of the course and start building the parts of your course.

Course Admin: The course administration tab (2.) is where you go to set up some of the basic information for your course.

General Course Info
1. First, click on the Author tab(1.). This puts you into the area where the faculty can edit courses.
2. Click on the Course Admin tab (2.).
3. On this screen you can change the course title, however, do not make any changes to this field. The current title carries a uniques designation that helps identify this course, section and faculty.
4. Most importantly, you can set the headings for each unit. Fill in the text box next to "Unit Heading" to designate what you'd like each unit to be called (session, week, topic, etc.). The default is Unit but can be changed to anything in this field. Each new area will numbered.
Scroll further down and you can edit your course description. This is shown in a course catalogue but not on the course home page. (See the next area for the Course Home Page.) Be sure as you make any changes in the course you always click the "Save Changes" button or your changes will be lost.

Other Options

Course Admin: Style Manager: This button takes you to a menu that allows you to edit the colors, background and look of the course.

Course Admin: Course Enrollment: When you are ready to get students into the class click here and you are given three options of how to get your students enrolled into the course. If you select "Allow members to self enroll" you can give students the URL to the Student Registration Instructions site, or you can print off copies to hand out to your class. On this page you will also see a list of all the Active Members of your class.

Course Admin: Group Management: If you would like to set up your class into groups for projects, discussions or presentations click on Course Admin/Group Management. When you first set up the groups you will see a link to "Add Group." Click here and then you will be able to name the group and select group members for each group. As the instructor you are able to see each group and the work that they do. Note, you will only be able to add students to the group after they are registered in the eSupport course. After setting up the groups you will then be able to create specific content items for different groups to do. This will be discussed further later in the section on creating and adding content items.

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Step 2: Creating Units/Topics: Building the Parts
To begin this part click on the Course Home button (1.) There are several actions you can take from this screen.

2. Post announcements
3. Add introductory information
4. Add new Units or Topics
5. Add content items to the course.
6. Manage files

Course Home: Edit Course Home:
1. Click on the Course Home button on the left. The first page you see will be the Edit Course Home area. From here you can create and edit what the student will see when they first enter the class. Including announcements; introduction and the layout of the class.

2. Announcements: This is the area to create announcements that will be seen when the student logs into the class. Click on Add New announcement and follow the directions to create an announcement for the class.

3. Introductory Information: Any type of information can be put into the Course Introduction box, including text pictures, table and links. This material will show on the students Course Home Page when they log into the class and forms a greeting to the class.

4. Add New "Topic, Unit , Session": The "word" here will depend on what you named the Unit Heading in the previous step. By clicking here you will be creating a new button on the left hand navigation bar and a new section of the class. The screen below will appear. 1. Type in a Title and 2. an introduction which will appear one the course page when that Unit/Topic is selected. 3. Click the Add topic button to save the changes.

This is an extremely powerful part of the system which allows you to be creative and not restricted to sequential labels. You can add topic or theme buttons such as "Class Projects" or "Themes".

5. Add Content Item: Click on this button to add content items to your course. These may be used anywhere in your course. See the section below for more details on how to add content.

6. Manage files: Click on this button to add pictures, files or pages that you may need to build some content items.

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Step 3: Creating Content Items

You may now select a type of content item and give it a name. In this case a text item is being created and called a "Lecture". Clicking the create button will attach the content item to your course.

You are able to add all of the items listed above but give them different names. For example you could create a "Text" type for "Assignments", another for "Lecture" and still another for "Greetings".

Once the Items have been created for the course you must assign them to the section, unit or topic where they should appear to the student. (See below)

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Step 4: Adding Content Items

1. You can now select in the window the Content Items that were created for the course in the previous step. 2. click the Add to . . . to add the into the Units or Topics that were created in the first step.

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Course Content: Course Tools
There are many options for developing a website for a face to face class. Listed below are some of the tools available to create learning experiences for your students. Most of the information about the teaching tools are in the orientation course for eComapnion. Once you have a class set up you will have access to this orientation course.

Tool Description Orientation Course Syllabus Under the Course Home button is the link to the course syllabus. You can load this information using the course author tab described below.   Announcements Students will see the announcements on the Course Home page each time they log in to the class. Unit 5 Text Documents Most of the course written material will be loaded into the class as text document.   Multimedia You will be able to put audio, video and powerpoint presentations into your course as multimedia files.   Threaded Discussions This is the equivalent of having a discussion in class. The professor posts a topic and the students are able to respond to the topic or responses. The discussionis asynchronous meaning students can participate at any time 24 hours a day. Unit 5 Chats Students must login at the same time to participate in a chat session. Unit 5 Exams Exams can be set up online using Multiple Choice, True and False, Matching, Short Answer and Essay format. Unit 6 Gradebook There is an online gradebook for the students to see their progress in the class.   Document Sharing This area is for faculty to post documents for students and students to post documents for each other and the professor. Unit 7 Webliography Students and faculty are able to post addresses of web sites that are related to the class. Unit 7