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
- First, click on the Author tab(1.). This puts you into the area where the faculty can edit courses.
- Click on the Course Admin tab (2.).
- 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.
- 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 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.
- 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.