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Home > Staff > Basics > Preparing a course site

Preparing a course site checklist

This page has technical steps for preparing your course site. The Course Site Design Checklist has additional considerations for the design and delivery of your course for a high-quality student experience.

1. Locate your course site on Learning@Griffith

To begin, you will need to be able to locate and access your course site. To find out how you can do this, see Accessing your course sites.

Course sites are created at the course code level rather than campus. Each campus cohort enrolments are automatically fed into the site using Sections.

If additional courses need to be joined (i.e., Undergraduate and Postgraduate offerings) or course splits are required to teach cohorts out of different sites, this can be done upon request.

2. Add your teaching team

Once you gain access to your course site, you will need to add your teaching staff. To do so, see Adding people to a Canvas Course. You may find our information on course roles helpful to ensure you provide the correct role to each member of the teaching team.

3. Copy content OR apply the Standard Griffith Course Site Template

By default, new course sites contain no content. Once your course has concluded and you need to transfer the content into a new course site for the following teaching period, you will need to perform a Course Copy.  For all new courses on the new Canvas LMS, the Course Site Template has been developed to offer students a coherent and cohesive approach to wayfinding and navigation. It is composed of a common approach to links in the course navigation menu and three intra-course links in the homepage navigation bar located on the home page of every course site. If the course is being taught for the first time and a course copy is not being done you need to bring the full Course Site Template into the site by Using Commons.

4. Groups setup

Groups can be used in Canvas to create group assessments, weekly group tasks, provide different assessment pieces to different sets of students and create a space to facilitate collaboration. These groups can be formed by section, randomly or using student self-enrol. These spaces can be used by students to hold discussions, simultaneously work on documents and share files.

5. Set up or update assessment

Any assessments or quizzes that have been copied over from the previous course will need to be updated and checked to make sure the descriptions and weighting match the current course profile (i.e. points possible = marks out of). To check all assignment due dates are correct:

  1. In your Canvas Course, access the Assignments link from the course navigation.
  2. Locate and click the kebab menu on the top right (3 vertical dots next to the + Assignment button).
  3. From the dropdown menu, select Edit Assignment Dates.
  4. On the new screen, you will see all the assignments listed, as well as the assigned dates. Adjust them as you require, then select save.

For assessments utilising external tools (e.g., PebblePad,  Turnitin), in most cases the assessment setup inside the external tool will not be updated as part of copying content to a new course. Please ensure you check these assessment items manually as you may need to do the setup once more.

6. Set up collaborative tools such as discussion boards

Discussions can be implemented as part of an assignment, or simply serve as a forum to discuss course learnings. To find out more about more, see Discussions.

7. Set up Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams can be used to provide an online learning environment for students in which they can attend live lectures or workshops. To find out more about setting up Microsoft Teams for your course, see Preparing online classes.

8. Lecture Capture (Echo360 Active Learning Platform)

If any in-person classes are recorded via Lecture Capture, Echo360 links need to be created and configured in each Learning@Griffith course site for student access. Links can be added to either the course navigation menu or to a module. To find out more about using Echo360 in your course, see Managing Echo360 recordings.

9. Set up or update your Reading List

All course readings need to be added to the assigned Reading List for the course. Reading Lists which have been copied over from the previous course will need to be updated and checked to ensure reading materials are:

  • Relevant and up to date
  • Accessible in an online format
  • Correctly tagged as required or recommended
  • Re-requested if digitisation from print is required

To find out more, see the Reading List Guides

To request the creation of a new Reading list, complete this form. To request library purchase of a new resource, complete this form.

10. Review and revise content, including availability dates

As a course copy moves over a lot of existing content, you may want to ensure that everything is working as expected within the new course site. Things you will need to ensure are still correctly setup within your new course are:

  • Assessment due dates
  • Embed links to external content (see Link Validation Tool)
  • Any content that makes use of external tools (e.g., Pebblepad Assignments, Microsoft Teams Meetings meeting dates)
  • Any New Quizzes/Item Banks that are set up in your course still have the correct permissions or settings

A comprehensive list of Canvas course copy gotchas are outlined in Reusing content from another course.

11. Check your Markbook

The Markbook allows instructors to view and enter grades for students. Grades can be viewed and entered as points, percentage, complete/incomplete, GPA scale or letter grade.

Only graded assignments, discussions, quizzes and surveys are included in the Markbook.

12. Check your course menu

The links that appear in the Course Navigation menu can be changed so that certain elements are hidden from students. Canvas includes a set of default Course Navigation links that are shown by default and cannot be renamed. Depending on your course configuration, other links may be available and may be customizable, e.g. enabling Smart Search in your course. To find out more about how you can manage these links, see How do I manage Course Navigation links? (Canvas Guides).

13. Check course availability

Course availability controls whether students can access and see the course content. For further information, see Check Course Availability for Students.

14. Post an announcement

Announcements allow you to communicate with your students about course activities. You should consider notifying the students at the start of the course about important information they should be aware of. Once you have created an announcement, Canvas will notify students according to their preferred notification settings.

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