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Enhance your course design in Brightspace with these tips! Regardless of your course's modality, these best practices in course design can help create an intuitive and easy-to-navigate learning environment for students.
Tip: Many of the recommendations in this article are available within the Brightspace development course template. Instructors can request a Brightspace development shell to receive a course shell that provides a weekly/modular structure.
Provide a clear course overview module with the syllabus
Make it clear to students where they can go to find information about the course, including the syllabus and course schedule. Having a Course Overview module gives students one place to look for information about getting started in your course.
Create intuitive and clearly explained course navigation
Is your course schedule organized by weeks of the semester? Then organize your Brightspace course by weeks of the semester! If a weekly structure doesn't work for your course, then you might consider organizing your course by module. Either way, we recommend designing the organization of your Brightspace course to match the organization of your course schedule. This can make navigation clear for students. Once your course structure is developed, take a few moments to explain to students how your course is organized, as every course is set up a bit differently.
Design with accessibility and usability principles
Keeping accessibility in mind helps everyone have a better learning experience! Here are a few tips that can enhance the learning environment for all students:
- Use the default font in Brightspace (Lato, 19px).
- Use Brightspace document templates (these are key in creating user-friendly, accessible, and interactive content in Brightspace). Rather than uploading a Word document or PDF with your content, create a webpage in Brightspace and use a document template to create responsive, mobile-friendly, and accessible content that your students can easily access.
- Use alternative text for any images in your course
Chunk content into weeks/modules at top navigation level
Does your Brightspace course still have that old Content folder from our days in Blackboard? Let go of the Blackboard past! Move your weekly modules out of that Content folder. This helps students get a better idea of what they've already completed when using the Visual Table of Contents feature in Brightspace (which is on every course home page).
Once your content is organized into modules or weeks, link everything that students need for that week/module within the module itself. This includes links to readings, discussion activities, assignments, quizzes, etc. This way students can get everything they need for that week/module in once place.
Avoid the use of sub-modules
Sub-modules can make navigating in Brightspace cumbersome, particularly when students are using the arrows to navigate from page to page. To make your course easy to navigate, avoid the use of sub-modules. If you have content or information in submodules, consider using Brightspace document templates to organize information into accordions or tabs.
Begin each module with an introduction and learning objectives
At the start of each week/module, provide students with some information about what they'll be learning and doing. Providing an introduction and learning objectives for each week or module can help prepare students for what they'll be engaging in and help them identify what participating in the week/module activities will help them be able to do. Providing this level of transparency to students can help motivate them and give them a way to check-in with themselves to help keep their learning on track.
Ensure content and activities align with SLOs
Help students see the forest through the trees. Take the time to ensure that everything in the course (content, assessments, learning activities, resources, etc.) is there to help students achieve the student learning outcomes (SLOs). If you do have supplementary resources as part of your course, indicate that to students so they can manage their time appropriately.
Provide instructions/context with each item in the course
Help guide students by providing instructions or context with each item you put in the course. For example, if you're uploading or linking to an article, you might point out specific things in the article for students to pay attention to. You could share your take on the article, or provide some questions for students to have in mind as they read. This not only helps create instructor presence, but gives students something specific to do or consider as they're engaging with the course content.
