ARCHIVED: Oncourse site types: Overview

This content has been archived, and is no longer maintained by Indiana University. Information here may no longer be accurate, and links may no longer be available or reliable.
Important:
Oncourse is retired. For details, see ARCHIVED: About the Oncourse retirement.

What they are

  • Course sites: A course site is the official worksite for a particular academic course. At Indiana University, course sites are automatically created for each official course, and the rosters are automatically populated from the registrar's office. Courses in certain schools are generated with tools sets that are customized to meet the specific needs of their students and instructors, for example:

    • IUSM sites: IUSM sites are course sites with additional tools specific to the IU School of Medicine. IUSM sites are based on the academic year, not on semesters.

      Note: SCS sites, a specialized type of course site for the School of Continuing Studies, are no longer able to be created.

  • Practice course sites: A practice course site emulates course site functionality so instructors and support staff can become familiar with Oncourse's features and experiment with course development and organization. IUSM practice course sites are also available. To request a practice course site or an IUSM practice course site, submit the request form. Once your practice site is created, use ARCHIVED: Site Setup to add participants to the roster and assign roles.

    Note: Students are not eligible to create practice course sites.

  • Project sites: Project sites are designed to facilitate collaboration. You can invite anyone you wish to join your project site.

    Any faculty or staff member can request a project site to use as a site for collaboration on project, committee, or research work. Students are eligible to set up project sites, but must have faculty or staff sponsors fill out and submit the request forms (i.e., students cannot submit request forms themselves). To request a project site, submit the request form. Once your project site is created, use ARCHIVED: Site Setup to manage participants and organize your site.

  • Portfolio sites: Portfolio sites allow faculty and administrators to guide students through the process of creating learning, assessment, and presentation portfolios; see ARCHIVED: Portfolio environment: Overview.

    Note: It is no longer possible to create new portfolio sites in Oncourse.

Key concepts

Customization: You can choose from features and functions to create sites that meet your needs. Examples include:

  • A course website where students can work on and submit assignments
  • A practice course site where you simulate an online class
  • A website where an instructor or project director can make announcements and share resources, such as documents or links to other websites
  • A website that serves as an online discussion board

My Workspace: When you log in, you will automatically open a site called My Workspace. All users get their own My Workspace sites.

Tabs: When you log in, the course, project, and portfolio sites to which you belong are displayed as tabs across the top of the screen. To enter a site, click its tab. If you belong to more sites than can be displayed as tabs, click More Sites to access the rest.

You can choose to hide sites (e.g., course sites from previous semesters) or reorder them (i.e., choose which sites to display in tabs) using the Preferences tool in My Workspace; see ARCHIVED: Showing, hiding, and ordering sites.

Menubar: Sites can have just a few or several functions (including announcements, a calendar, an online discussion area, assignments, electronic resources, a chat area, and more). You can choose which tools to include in your site, and they will be added to the menubar along the left side of the screen. To access a tool, click its name in the menubar. Sites also have a home page, accessed by clicking Home in the menubar.

Things to consider

Help documentation

For help documentation about sites, see ARCHIVED: Sites.

This is document ardt in the Knowledge Base.
Last modified on 2018-01-18 14:28:38.