ARCHIVED: Checklist for Oncourse course semester readiness

The following suggestions may help instructors prepare for the beginning of the semester; you may also want to consult with your campus teaching and learning center about using Oncourse in your class.

Announcements

• Do you have an initial announcement, such as, "This course is under construction until the first day of the semester or until this announcement is removed", posted?
• If your announcements (including the initial one) have start and end dates specified, have you checked them for accuracy?

Syllabus

• Does your syllabus contain the required components? Are your expectations clearly indicated? (Specific requirements may vary across academic programs, but one general guide can be found in the Indiana University Teaching Handbook from the IU Bloomington Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education; similar resources may be available from other campuses or units.) For help with the Syllabus tool, see ARCHIVED: Syllabus.

Oncourse menubar

• Have all unnecessary tools been disabled? See ARCHIVED: Adding, removing, hiding, or reordering tools.
• Have you added necessary tools? See ARCHIVED: Default tools for new sites for a list of all tools available.
• Are you teaching in a classroom with computers? If so, you may wish to disable the Chat tool. Students may use it to communicate with each other when you do not want to facilitate such collaboration.

Resources

• Is the Resources tool organized into folders with clear, precise names for ease in locating important information? See ARCHIVED: Resources.

Gradebook

• Is the Gradebook setup complete, with point values or relative weights assigned where applicable? See ARCHIVED: Gradebook.
• Are categories used for weighting or for organization? See ARCHIVED: Using categories and weighted grades in Gradebook.
• Has each gradebook entry been assigned to a category (when categories are used)?
• Have the Course Grade Options (grading scale) been checked and verified? See ARCHIVED: Changing the grade entry, type, and scale in Gradebook.
  Note:

  For sites created on or after June 3, 2010, the default grade scale has changed, but if you import Gradebook settings from an earlier semester, the grade scale of the older site will override this default. See ARCHIVED: The default grade scale in Gradebook.
• If you're going to grade from forum topics, do you have an entry in the gradebook for each topic that needs a grade?

Tests

• Have you imported tests from previous semesters, if necessary? See ARCHIVED: Exporting assessments.
• Have access dates and times been specified, if the test is not open access? See ARCHIVED: Tests & Surveys.
• Have the time limit and number of submissions been specified (unless it's open-ended and a single submission)?
• If a test was disabled during creation, has it been enabled?
• Are test scores set to report to Gradebook automatically, if desired?

Forums

• Have you created all the topics you want in your forums?
• Are topics in the order you need them to be in?
• Have you set the permission levels for group-restricted topics? Remember to disable all permissions for the "Student" role, and to enable the desired permissions for the relevant group.

Web Content

• If your course content is redirected from the Web Content tool, have you renamed the tool?
• Have you checked and corrected all links in your content?

Alternative means of contacting students

• Have you recorded the email address related to the Email Archive tool for each course? This email address can be used to contact site members using email rather than through Oncourse.

Publishing site

• Have you considered unpublishing your site to limit access? If you have unpublished it, have you published it again, so it is now visible to participants? See ARCHIVED: Publishing or unpublishing a site.

AIs/TAs

• If there are people who will be acting as teaching assistants or grading assistants for the class, have you added them to your site in the appropriate roles for the functions they'll be performing? See ARCHIVED: Participant roles and ARCHIVED: Adding, editing, or removing participants.

  Note: Due to FERPA restrictions, AIs/TAs are only able to see student names and grades for people in their own groups (or sections, in combined sites). In regular (i.e., not combined) course sites with no groups created, AIs/TAs will not see any students in the Roster. To allow AIs/TAs to see student information, create a group for each AI/TA and add the AI/TA to that group. You can create a group containing everyone in the class, if necessary. See ARCHIVED: Managing groups.