myCourses Help and Resources

› Announcements

Vendor Documentation

› Instructor Documentation
› Learner Documentation

Page tree
Skip to end of metadata
Go to start of metadata

Introduction

You may notice that myCourses is much different for instructors than it is for students. This guide is to supplement the Basic Introduction page, which is where you should start when getting ready to use myCourses.

The myCourses Quick Reference Guide (PDF Link) is a step-by-step guide to many common instructor tasks. It is designed to be printed on tabloid sized paper and folded. Printed copies are available at the Teaching and Learning Services front desk, Wallace 05-A600.

My Home

The only difference between your My Home page and students My Home page is the widgets along the right side of the page. The two most used are the Course Shell Request form, and the Course Merge Request form.

The Course Shell Request form is there for you to request empty myCourses shells. These are not to be used for credit-bearing courses. However, if you have a committee that you would like to have a myCourses page for, or a shell that you can use to develop your course in without students having access, feel free to fill out the form and request one. Course Shell Requests are usually completed within one business day of the request.

The Course Merge Request form is there for you to request multiple courses to be merged into one. The most popular use for this is instructors who are teaching multiple sections of the same course. This eliminates the need for you to post things multiple times to give all your students access. Course Merge Requests take a bit longer to do, since it is a two step process which requires the daily feed to be run once before completion, so they are usually complete within two business days.

Course Home

After clicking on a course title from the My Home page, you will be on the homepage for you course. Here you will see an Announcements listing. It is often helpful to post at least one Announcement item introducing yourself, and informing students of how their course will be using myCourses. Every instructor uses myCourses a little differently so it is important to communicate your expectations to students up front to avoid confusion.

Also from within a course is the ability to switch roles, and view your course as a Student or a Teaching Assistant would see it. Click your name at the upper right of the page. Then click View as Student to interact with your course as a generic student user, or click Change and then click the role name to interact with your course as a generic user in that role.

Content

The important thing to know about the Content section is that you must create Modules to place your items (topics) into. Some instructors break up content, having a Module for reading assignments and another for lectures. Others organize content by week. You must have at least one Module to be able to upload things into your course.

There are many Release Conditions on BOTH Modules and Topics, but in most cases you only need to configure this on the module since setting a release on the module controls access for all of the topics in that module.

Classlist

You can email your whole class through the following steps:

  1. Make sure everyone is on one page. At the bottom of the page, there is an option to view X per page.
  2. Once everyone is on one page, click the checkbox at the top of the classlist table. It will check the boxes next to all the student names.
  3. Click the email icon at the top of the page, it looks like an envelope.
  4. A new window will open where you can type your message. Be sure to CC yourself in on the email, so that you can ensure it was sent because myCourses does NOT keep track of sent emails. *NOTE* if you navigate away from the Classlist page while you are typing the email, the email window will close.

If your classlist is not showing up, review the Classlist FAQ.

Discussions

The important thing to realize about the Discussions tool is that you MUST create a Forum and Topics in order for students to see them. If you create a forum, and no topics, students will not see anything.

Additional Support

Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) staff are available to assist faculty teaching classes with teaching strategies, the scholarship of teaching and learning, and course development. They also help coordinate and consult on technology and media use in your course. Contact CTL.

  • No labels