TWU ID wiki / Course Design - General Design Principles

TWU Blogs

Course Design - General Design Principles

General design principles will have make your course more appealing and reduce some of the problems associated with poorly designed courses. This section discusses a few general tips to make your course design experience a little easier.

A well designed Bb course will be easier for students to navigate, students will be able to see relationships between content, they will be more efficient in their use of the site, and they may even learn better! A well designed course can also save you time and headaches answering student course mechanics questions and let you focus on teaching.

Course Availability.

Make a habit of looking for the Unavailable label next to each course title in your Blackboard course list. This will help you know the availability status of your course.

Avoid “Folder Empty”

(Course Menu)

It is helpful to remove any content areas and tool links that you will not be using in your course. This creates a clean course menu and allows students to find the relevant course information quickly.

Gain their Attention.

(Course Design)

The look and feel of your Blackboard course impacts student motivation and satisfaction. Consider asking your students what they think about certain aspects of the course and adjust based on their input.

Beware of the Tools!

(Manage Tools)

Note that if you make a tool unavailable within Manage Tools, the tool will not be visible in your Control Panel and will not be impacted by any adjustments within the Manage Course Menu option.

Course Content.

Within the Course Materials section of your course, organize all related content into folders that are organized by week, or by topic, or by module, etc. An easy way to accomplish this is to set up one module or section of content and then copy the content the number of times you need it, using the copy button in the content areas.

Consider adding handouts, media files, supplemental materials, external links, etc. that are related to a specific week, topic, or module into one folder so that students can easily find related content and information. You can even link related discussion board topics and assignments within the appropriate folders.

Give content items meaningful titles. You can use color to differentiate between different types of content items. For example, course handouts could have blue titles and assignments could have red titles. When linking files to content items, replace the standard file names with more meaningful titles.

Provide brief descriptions of content items.