2. Before you get started
When creating your course, it’s important to ensure that it’s easy to
use in terms of navigation, layout, organisation of materials and
appearance. It’s well worth taking some time with a piece of paper to
consider:
• The purpose of the course
• The menu items that you’d like to have available
• What key content you’ll include and where
• How you’ll organise information (by week, topic, etc)
• What media (images, audio, video) you might use
• What Tools you’d like to make available
This is a great way to make sure that information is easy to find, and
that staff and students can easily access the stuff that they need to.
3. Planning a course in the VLE
A course can be created for you, and relevant staff and students
enrolled on it. However, as the Instructor who has responsibility how
the course looks and operates, there are a few things to consider in
making your course accessible and easy to use:
• Colour scheme – you can customise this in the Control Panel, but
make sure that e.g. text is still readable.
• Contact info – though most of your students may know who you are
and where to find you, it’s useful for your info to be available for
reference in the VLE.
• Make content obvious – when naming files and folders, use a name
that will give a clear idea of the purpose of a file e.g.
term1timetable.doc
• Use descriptive text – again, in the interest of providing context,
add some accompanying text about resources you upload.
4. Organising a course menu
It’s important for a course menu to be clear and the purpose of
each area/ item obvious. The below example shows some of the
main areas to include, as well as tools for editing.
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2 4
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1. Add new items to the menu here.
2. Click and drag these arrows to rearrange order of items.
3. Shows that content area (menu item) is empty.
4. Edit the names of menu items by clicking here.
5. Shows that menu item is not available.
5. Clarifying the purpose of content
Make the purpose of all files and folders clear with intuitive names and
descriptive text.
This example shows potentially
confusing content, with little
context or clarification. When
adding files, organise the folder
structure so that files are saved
into relevant and appropriate
folders as opposed to being
posted in one long list.
Whilst this example is much clearer,
and the contents of the folder
more obvious.
