A Broad Overview of Organizing a Blackboard Course Shell
Channel: PWSC Training
Date: 15/10/2019

This video explores the concept behind creating and designing a "Start Here!" content area to orient students to the nature of your course. It also examines the difference between presenting groups of content items as a series of items on the same page, through folders, or through the use of a learning module. We'll also touch upon adding tool links that you intend to use directly to your course navigation, and the manipulation of your course entry point over time.

00:00 - Start Here! pages
00:35 - Making hyperlinks stand out
01:00 - Start Here! versus using Announcements
01:14 - Using Edit Mode to drag item objects up and down
01:32 - Identifying a Content Area
01:41 - Displaying objects as a single list of items on the same page
02:03 - Entering Student View mode
02:20 - Viewing a list of items in a Learning Module
02:52 - Why I chose Folder over Learning Module
03:21 - Copying/Moving items as necessary
04:45 - Example of a course using only Learning Modules
05:05 - Pointing out Content Areas possibly already created for you to help with organization
05:24 - Adding a new Content Area to the Navigation Menu
05:32 - Tools and their locations
06:00 - Linking to a Tool from the Navigation Menu
06:15 - Linking to a Tool via Course Link object
06:30 - Entry Points/Course Landing Areas

Lists of items are useful in that you can quickly scan down the list--as long as each item has an easy to read title--and find the content that you want to review or learn. This is similar to a folder. Folders are great if you find that there are just too many items on a single page and students have a hard time locating what they need to quickly. Folders allow multiple items to be displayed at once, unless the folder is within a Learning Module.

Learning Modules force students to view each content item/object individually as part of a structured list of items. This can be useful if you want to force students to only interact with one item at a time, but it can make going back to that item to review it more difficult. You should never enforce sequential learning when you create a Learning Module because this is going to prevent students from properly reviewing the module at a later time if they need a refresher; the module will always make them start from the beginning and click successively until they arrive at the item that they wanted to review in the first place.