Oncourse Modules: Overview

What it does

The Modules tool is a lesson builder tool that allows instructors to publish and organize learning material to guide students through the learning process. The tool provides a structure to help instructors build modules and add content to them. It also provides a navigation structure to guide students through the modules in a clear, logical way.

Key concepts

Features

Using Modules, instructors may:

• Organize content within modules hierarchically with up to ten levels of nesting. All navigation is provided by the tool.
  
  
• Rearrange modules and content sections within modules freely.
  
  
• Use a rich-text editor within the tool to create content.
  
  
• Upload existing content from a local computer.
  
  
• Use URLs to point to content that already exists in Resources or on the web.
  
  
• Choose an appropriate copyright type for content.
  
  
• Easily add assignments and further instructions to modules using "Next Steps".

Views

There are four views in the Modules tool:

• View: This view allows you to preview and access modules as they appear to students. For modules that are not open to students, the module title will appear, but the link will be inactive. Instructors can see these closed modules in preview mode.
  
  
• Author: In Author view, you can add, edit, archive, and delete modules and sections. You can add content to sections and create next steps.
  
  
• Manage: This view allows you to restore inactive modules, sort modules and sections, and import or export modules from other sites.
  
  
• Preferences: In this view you can set preferences for whether modules appear expanded or collapsed.

Things to consider

• You can organize modules in any way that works for you (e.g., by week, by unit, by lecture).
  
  
• A module consists of one module page and one or more content sections, depending on how you want to organize your information. A module page is like the title page of a document. On a module page, you assign a title, add a description and keywords, if desired, and set the open and close dates for the module.
  
  
• You publish content in section pages. If you have a short topic, you may only want one section. If your module consists of multiple topics, resources, and materials, you may want to break it up into several sections. When a student is reading a content section, breadcrumb links to next and previous sections, as well as the Table of Contents module list, provide easy navigation.
  
  
• In the Author view, instructors see all of the modules and sections numbered with nested sections indicated (e.g., 2.3.1, 5.3, 3.2.4.1). When students open Modules and see the Table of Contents view, they see a bulleted list without any numbering. When students open a module by clicking its name, the section numbers appear.
  
  
• You are responsible for becoming familiar with guidelines on appropriate copyright compliance relating to the use of resources in your course sites. Columbia University's Copyright Quick Guide is a good place to start.

Help documentation

For help documentation about the Modules tool, see Modules.

Some information in this document was taken from the CSU Interact Modules Tool User Guide.

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