Structure and navigation

Watch the Structure and Navigation video (2 mins) below to see the baseline standards in practice.

Baseline Practices

1. These sections of the provided course template remain unchanged to aid consistency of navigation across courses:
   • Welcome
   • Unit Information and Resources
   • Unit Assessment
   • Learning materials organised in weekly or topic sections, in line with the agreed faculty structure
   • Assessment, Submission and Feedback folder.

   Important! The Assessment, Submission and Feedback folder is for staff only. It is necessary for the integration between Blackboard and SITS and should not be deleted, renamed or made visible to students. All student-facing assessment information should be added to the Unit Assessment section.

2. All content is placed within the templated sections (ie learning modules and folders) and not at the top level of the unit course.
3. Written instructions or a short video ‘unit tour’ (see Re/Play browser-based capture) are included in the course, explaining how it is organised and how students are expected to engage with it.
4. Images which visually represent the content are used for all learning modules.
5. All sections with learning materials maintain a consistent structure and order, whether they are organised in weeks or topics.
6. Clear and descriptive titles (eg, “Week 1 Social Psychology slides”) are used for all content (including learning modules, folders, documents, attachments, lecture recordings), so that students can easily find them using search.
7. Descriptions are used to guide students through the content and help them in finding the relevant information without having to click on each section.
8. Course links are used to cross-reference resources and materials where possible. Where that is not possible, the precise location of the content is provided (eg, “This can be found in the ‘Additional Help’ folder in the ‘Unit Information and Resources’ section”).
9. Title, heading and sub-heading text styles are used in the text editor to structure documents (see Content Editor).
10. Resource lists are organised into topics/weeks corresponding to the course structure.

Beyond the Baseline 

• Titles of the Re/Play recordings are edited to match names of the sessions in the timetable.
• Descriptions, tags and thumbnails are used to help students find the Re/Play recording they need more effectively.
• Students are provided with a ‘walk through’ of the unit course in Blackboard during an initial in-person session.
• Materials point students to the next step in the course (eg, “Once you have finished reviewing this document, take a look at the ‘Assessment Brief 1’ located in the ‘Unit Assessment’ section”).
• Forced sequence is used when reviewing content in order has a pedagogical advantage.
• The course image (banner) is personalised by unit, so that students can easily recognise the unit in their Courses list (the banner should not include the course name or code).
• For units with many weeks or topics, the current week/topic is at the top of the learning and teaching materials section so that students do not have to scroll to find it.
• If learning materials are organised by weeks, their titles include the topic, week number and date (eg, “Week 1 - 23/09, Introduction to Social Psychology”).
• Staff within a programme or school review each other’s courses to share good practices and ensure consistent course organisation.