Dear Fullerton College Faculty,

Some of you have requested a template from me for your courses. Here it is. It was designed for one of the courses that I currently teach, and it follows current best practices for course design. It also uses Canvas as it is meant to be used with Modules as the central focus, which is the standard for both online and face-to-face classes inside Canvas. I am constantly improving my courses (I am in no way suggesting that this is perfect), so I may update this at some point. In fact, this course template only contains half of a semester, but it contains enough so that you can get the feel for good design practices. Feel free to download this course and upload it into any of your own course shells or sandboxes in order to get you started on building your own courses. I have licensed this course under public domain, so you may use any components here that you like.

You may get help with downloading/uploading this course from the Canvas help desk at 844-600-4948. You will find the file for this course in two places: in the Faculty Information Center under Modules, Course Template, and in this course under Modules.

TIPS:

Only show students what you need them to see (otherwise it is confusing to them). Organize your course menu under Settings, Navigation.
Use Pages as much as possible because they are easiest to comply with accessibility, easiest to read, and appear seemlessly on computers and smart phone apps.
Use Announcements to communicate with your students--they are pushed out to student preferred emails.
Modules is where all course materials go. For face-to-face courses, match the Modules to your weekly agendas.
Using an LMS for a face-to-face course provides easy access of materials to students, a classroom environment when they are not in class, and a place for them to review concepts that they do not get in class.
If you use a home page, like this one, be sure to include a guide to the course so that students know where to start. You can also set your course home page to land on Modules, if you like.

For more design tips, go to guides.instructure.com, and go to MyGateway, Calendars for training opportunities.

Sincerely,

Dr. Lisa Montagne

Fullerton College Educational Technology Manager

Welcome to the home page of Writing 1: Using and Analyzing Written Texts

with Dr. Lisa Montagne.

COURSE GUIDE

Go to each of these sections on the left-hand menu.

Announcements: Go to Announcements for all course announcements--check this section on a regular basis.

Syllabus: Go to Syllabus for general information about the course, contact information for Dr. Montagne, and important policies you need to know to be successful in this course.

START EACH WEEK IN

Modules: This is where ALL instructions and materials are for each week.

YOU DO ALL OF YOUR WORK INSIDE THE MODULES.

TIP: Do not look only at the To-Do List. You must do your work from inside Modules, or you will be missing the instructional materials.

Grades: Go to Grades for feedback on your work.

Watch this video on how to navigate this course.

Watch this video for how to check your grade feedback.

Watch this video for how to see comments on uploaded assignments.

COURSE THEME: Technology and Current Issues