Creating a Course

After clicking on the "Create" button next to "My Courses" "My Communities" or "My Assessment Groups" you will be asked to confirm the type of group you wish to create. The option that is selected-as indicated by a blue dot-will depend on which button you clicked. This is because the method for creating courses, communities, and assessment groups is identical. Users also have the ability to change the type of group at any point using the settings tab within the course.

While it is optional, we would recommend entering a course title for easy identification.

While also optional, course descriptions can be helpful for faculty and students to differentiate courses with similar titles and subject matter if they are enrolled in more than one within the same discipline.

Clicking in the checkbox next to "allows students to enroll themselves" will enable the course for searching and enrollment by all other users within the system. A password can also be created to limit access to only those who have a password. This can be set using the course settings tab.

This particular setting is very important as it specifies when the course will be active and appear in a student and faculty's list of current courses. After the "To:" date passes, the course will be moved to the "Past Courses" tab next to "My Courses."

This is the area where faculty can specify what types of course tools they will need to have access to. Here's a breakdown of what's available:

• Gradebook: Allows faculty to create assignments within the "Discussion" tab of a course that are numerically or alphabetically graded.
• Attendance: Allows faculty to generate an attendance roster for the students enrolled in their class that can be used to track attendance and exported as a CSV.
• Discussions: Houses both standard discussion forums as well as the ability for faculty to upload course materials and create gradable assignments.
• Portfolios: Creates an "e-Portfolios" tab within a course that can be used to quickly access all of the ePortfolios shared with a course.
• Assignments: Not to be confused with the gradable assignments that are created in the "Discussions" tab and populate the gradebook, the "Assignments" tab within courses are used to create multi-step assignments used for scoring with rubrics or against institutional standards.
• Jumpstart assignment: Where enabled, this creates a one-step assignment for faculty to build off of when they first create their course.
• Standards: The "Standards" tab within courses is where faculty can attach institutional or programmatic learning outcomes to assignments within the "Assignments" tab.

After you've specified the tools needed for your course and entered all other relevant information, you can click on the "Create" button at the bottom of the screen to create your course and then you'll be ready to move on to the next step, populating your course with students and content.