Structure your courses clearly to help students navigate quickly, understand the sequence of activities, access information and easily understand the layout of unfamiliar courses. These items are expected for every taught course at City of Glasgow College.
Every course has a Home page where typically learners will find a brief overview of the unit and links to other useful information.
Add a short welcome message on the Home page to introduce the unit.
Present activities and resources in a meaningful, clearly structured way, and sequenced by theme/topic.
Typically, each Canvas Module represents a topic, which may cover one or more weeks of study.
Use clear names for each Module.
Within the Module, use a Page to create an overview that introduce the topic or set of resources/activities to be undertaken in each lesson.
Bring together common elements, use Text Headers to provide common sub-headings across Modules to help students navigate.
Add Prerequisites if you want to control the pace of learning and prevent students looking ahead.
Use heading styles within Pages to maintain consistency across Modules and help students see where they are.
Keep the heading and subheading styles in a logical order e.g., Heading 3 should be used as a sub-heading below Heading 2, etc.
Within the course, use a variety of learning content to keep students engaged.
Sections can be used to assign interactive materials to separate groups of students, where required.
Guide students as to which task to complete next. This may include appropriate use of conditional release, so tasks are hidden until prerequisite tasks are completed, or until a certain date.
Use Gradebook to monitor student progress and attainment.
