• Consider where items will live and how students will access them. This can relate to the type of content (digital or paper-based) as well as where students go to acquire the content.
• Review and set due dates. Organize assignment and assessment dates in chronological order. Ensure dates for large assignments do not conflict with each other resulting in an increasingly stressful workload for students. Putting these dates into a calendar can be helpful for both the instructor and students.
• Plan for the unpredictable. Unexpected school closures due to weather or pandemic, family emergencies and illnesses can occur at any time. Have a plan in place for when the instructor or student(s) are unable to attend class.
• Align the syllabus and course navigation. Language in both the syllabus and assignment directions should match the course organization. Limit confusion by having a similar procedure for each type of task.
• Explain the course navigation to students. Students often take multiple classes in a given semester and each course has its own unique organizational structure. Help alleviate potential confusion by modeling how to navigate and interact with the course. If using an online course shell, consider making a short video explaining the course structure, this is an important part of your student course orientation.

Determine your course’s organizational structure before building. Ensure it is consistent, logically organized, easy to navigate and visually appealing.

Streamline the sections of the course students will need to access. Hide or delete any areas that are not being used (particularly when adopting a template).

Identify which sections will be accessed from the course navigation menu and which items will live inside other tabs. For example: syllabus, content, assignments, assessments, discussions and resources.

Limit the number of places students have to navigate during a given unit or lesson. Develop a unit plan to think through these components.

Set due dates on assignments. Assignments and assessments with due dates will populate in a student’s Calendar.

Navigate the course from a student’s perspective. In UB Learns, this can be done using View as Student.

Online courses should follow a simple hierarchy structure with no more than two levels of organization (Powell, 2003). This makes it essential to utilize the course menu in a meaningful way. One important consideration is to determine what will be a tab on the course menu and what will live inside a tab or content folder.

Review the following suggestions for maximizing the effectiveness of the course menu:

• Clearly label the tabs
• Identify where students go to access content and submit work
• Keep the structure consistent throughout
• Hide or delete unused sections
• Organize similar areas together using dividers
• Limit the items on the course menu so that scrolling is not necessary

Consider how this might look for a discussion. Will you have a “Discussion Forum” tab on the course menu? Or will students access the discussion through the weekly content folder or module? This is also a common distinction for assignments. Will students see an “Assignments” tab on the left navigation bar of your course? Or will the assignments be embedded within each week’s content folder or module? Or both? While courses will always use tabs, what they say and where students will go to access material is a choice that needs to be made.

The following are common examples of areas that may appear as tabs on your course menu. As always, these can be customized to best suit your course. Changing module and submodule names is a simple process in UB Learns.

Structure and customize online courses.

A general introduction to navigating an online course in UB Learns.

Update and organize your course menu in UB Learns.

Add content using a variety of tools and methods in Brightspace.

Best practices for course organization and practical ideas to explore.