Guidelines for Populating the Blended Weekly Introduction
This tip page provides some suggestions for organizing weekly modules in a blended course. The tables, headings, and text can be modified and deleted as you populate it with the instructions, resources, and content for your course.
Module Overview
Provide a brief overview of the module topic. This is a great place to connect to prior learning and motivate students. You can use this section to gain attention and interest, establish relevance, and pique curiosity.
You may want to briefly indicate, at a high level, what is expected in terms of:
- pre-work (asynchronous or synchronous),
- readiness activities or assessments they are to complete before class,
- in-class activities,
- post-work following in-class activities.
Learning Outcomes
This section provides learners with a clear purpose to focus their learning efforts. Learning outcomes presented in the weekly introduction are sub-outcomes of your course learning outcomes. Alternatively, list the course-level learning outcomes that are addressed through this week’s content, activities, and assignments that will take place prior to, during, and after the classroom sessions.
Resource: CTE Teaching Tips
Pre-Work
Use this section to provide a description of the pre-work students should complete before the in-class activities and the order in which they should complete the activities.
It is helpful to make clear what aspects of the pre-work should be submitted for evaluation and grading or brought to class and how this pre-work will help prepare them for the in-class activities and/or assessment. You might frame the activities or assessments they are to submit as evidence of their readiness for class – i.e., Readiness Activity.
Open all / Close all
Organization Option 1 — Table (Click to expand/collapse)
If the pre-work includes several steps and/or requires students to work through content, readings, and activities in a particular order it can be helpful to provide students with a high-level overview of these steps in a list or table like the example below. If there are only a few steps for students to complete, however, adding a table may not provide any added value, could be a source of confusion, and may unnecessarily duplicate information (opportunity for error), and can make the instructions unnecessarily long. Instead, you could use the headings provided below in organization option 2.
| Step 1 |
Content
Work through online content and complete the self-assessment within the module content pages:
- 1a. Introduction to process
- 1b. Process over time
|
Required |
| Step 2 |
Reading
- Last name, A. (2020). Article Title. Journal Title, 1(2), 10-21.
|
Required |
| Step 3 |
Content
Work through online content and complete the self-assessment within the module content pages:
|
Required |
| Step 4 |
Supplementary Resources
- Last name, A. (2021). Article Title. Journal Title, 3(4), 80-99.
|
Optional |
| Step 5 |
Readiness Activity
|
Graded |
Organization Option 2 — Headings (Click to expand/collapse)
Content
If you have created content (e.g., html pages with text and visuals, videos, powerpoint slides) as part of the pre-work consider dividing the content into meaningful chunks, topics, or sections and having each section appear on its own page (consider using the basic-page template) or link to the content (e.g., video, pdf, powerpoint slides). This will help keep this introduction page as a clean and clear overview and help prevent students from feeling overwhelmed or missing pertinent instructions. Use meaningful content titles that help students see and understand the structure of the content.
- 1a. Title of the first page/video/pdf/slides
- 1b. Title of the second page/video/pdf/slides
Resources
Required Resources
If you have readings from a textbook or course reserve, share this information with students here. Consider providing a short introduction or some context for the readings.
Reminder: Readings come from many different sources and hence are accessed in various ways: Course Reserves, external links, or hosting (in LEARN or Perusall). Remember that it is important to uphold copyright terms, regarless of the access method you choose. Learn More: Copyright for Teaching Online.
If you are using course reserves, provide this instruction to students:
Course Reserves can be accessed using the Library Resources widget on the Course Home page. You will be able to read and/or download the article being discussed.
Optional Resources
It can be helpful to introduce optional readings, explaining what each resource is and how students may find it helpful or interesting.
Readiness Activity
In this section outline the specific activities or assessments that students should do in preparation for the in-class portion(s) of the module.
E.g., Week 1 Quiz can be found can be found in Quizzes, under Submit in the course navigation bar.
If the Pre-work Readiness Activities/Assessments require more lengthy instructions, it can be helpful to include those details in a separate instruction document or page, so this introductory module page does not become too long and remains clean and easy to navigate. Consider adding a contextual link to an activity instructions page (described in the Time-Saving Tip above).
E.g., Week 1 Reflection [link to detailed instructions page]
In some cases, the Readiness Activity will take place in class, in which case you can include this section in the In-Class section of this page (below).
In-Class
Include a brief description of what will take place during the in-class session. Let students know what resources, tools or materials they will need to have on hand in order to be prepared for, use, and participate in the class activities. The In-Class section may include online Content and Resources sections, as demonstrated in the Pre-Work section of this template.
Post-Work
If your course design includes post-class work, include a description of the work students are to complete after the in-class activity. Similar to pre-work, it is helpful to make clear what aspects of the post-work should be submitted for evaluation and grading and/or how this work will help them prepare for later assessments. The Post-Work section may include online Content and Resources sections, as demonstrated in the Pre-Work section of this template.
OPTIONAL — Organizational Table: If there are several steps students should complete as part of the post-work and/or the activities are multi-step and complex it can be helpful to provide the steps in a quick-reference list or table, as shown above.
References
Include the citations, in a consistent style, as needed.
Time-Saving Tips
Time-Saving Tip 1
To help students get oriented at the outset of the course it can be helpful to clarify what a ‘blended’ or ‘flipped’ course is and outline the general structure of the learning path through your course specifically (e.g., the structure each module will follow). This can be done on the first Module Introduction page or in a Course Description section of the Course Outline. You are also encouraged to review the learning path and expectations with students in the first in-person class.
Time-Saving Tip 2
Remind students at this point to check the Course Schedule for due dates.
Keeping all due dates in one place (i.e., in the Course Schedule) eliminates the chance of making consistency errors that can arise from having dates in multiple locations. This also makes it faster/easier to adapt and update your course dates from term-to-term.
Time-Saving Tip 3
Adding links to your content pages helps support student navigation. Embedding images provides valuable visual cues for students. Use the Insert Quicklink and/or Insert Image tool (see below) to link and add images that will then be contextual and will persist each time you copy the course to a new term.
© University of Waterloo
Adding Links: Click the link icon (Insert Quicklink), select Content, and navigate to the page you would like to link to in your LEARN course. This will add a link that will navigate directly to this page.
Adding Images: Click the image icon (Insert Image) to add an image and navigate to the file you would like to link to in your LEARN course. This will embed the image, which will persist each time you copy the course to a new term.