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Centre for Extended Learning Open Resource Repository

Supporting Student Navigation in LEARN

Weekly Structure for Content

Image of the Table of Contents in LEARN including one module for the Syllabus, one for Assignments, and one module for each week of materials.

© University of Waterloo

  • We recommend organizing all of your content into weekly modules.
  • Weekly modules ensure students know what they need to do for that week and have all the materials they need.
  • We also recommend one module for your Syllabus material and one for all Assignments. You can add links to these module pages for assignment instructions and deadlines.
  • Consider adding titles to each module (Week 1: Business Processes).

To add weekly modules, go to Content. Under the Table of Contents menu, you will see Add a module… You can use this feature to create weekly modules for your course.

Due Dates

  • Use the course schedule document as the key source for all deadlines. The course schedule is typically found in the Syllabus module.
  • Avoid putting due dates in multiple places in the content of your course. This creates a scavenger hunt when trying to find and revise dates for a new term.
  • If you’d like to remind students about deadlines, you can add deadlines to the announcements as they can be easily updated each term.

Weekly Pages

  • Use the Weekly Introduction Page template to provide a snapshot of what students need to do for that week: introduction, learning outcomes, readings, content, and assignments.
  • Use the Insert Quicklink function to link to the course schedule instead of repeating deadlines. You can use the same approach for assignment instructions. For example, Complete Assignment 1. See your Course Schedule for due dates.

Note: If you use LEARN to track students and the topics they visited, LEARN only monitors whether a whole page has been viewed, not individual links within a page. Consider using a weekly page and a series of topic pages to support navigation and help monitor progress.

Topic Pages

An image of the Paragraph drop-down menu including Paragraph, Address, Preformatted, H1 - Heading 1, H2 - Heading 2, H3 - Heading 3

© University of Waterloo


  • Consider breaking your module content into meaningful chunks or topic pages.
  • Use descriptive titles for each topic page to help students navigate material.
  • In the template, use the paragraph drop-down menu to access the heading options (H1, H2, H3). This helps to create a clear, logical flow for your content. H1s start each page and there is only one per page. H2s are your subtopics, H3s your sub-subtopics, and so on.

Checklists

  • LEARN has a Checklist tool under Resources in the navigation bar.
  • Weekly checklists may be useful to highlight key tasks for each week.
  • You may also create checklists to outline key steps for an assignment.
  • See this resource to create a checklist.