Teaching Online: How To Plan and Organize Your Course

Blackboard Buttons as Content and Site Organizers

You'll want to resist the urge to use all of the buttons or more buttons than you need. Having a course site with too many content areas can disperse content too much and result in a confusing site, one in which materials become "buried" or are overlooked because they aren't grouped together when logically they could or should be. To enhance the clarity, coherence, and ease of use (or "user-friendliness") of the site, placing modules of content within one or two buttons or site areas seems to work best.

For example, instead of putting assignments in a separate button or area called "Assignments," and instead of separating lectures (if you are using them) from the rest of your materials in a "Lectures" button, it makes more sense to group these items within a specific topical unit along with any other items that belong together.

Why?
While an argument can be made for separating out some items into their own buttons or areas, doing so requires additional care in cross-referencing and in inserting reminders to students regarding where items are located. Sometimes there may be a compelling reason to take this approach. Usually, however, there isn't. A question you always have to ask yourself as you plan a distance course is how will any given decision you make work for distance students, that is, students separated from you and each other in time and space? Since students in an asynchronous distance education setting cannot ask quick questions easily, as students in the classroom can, it is always best to be extra sensitive to possibilities for confusion and try to prevent them.

IMPORTANT TIP: Make sure that any buttons you don't use, you disable. You don't want students finding empty areas on a site and thinking that they might be missing materials. You can disable them by going to Control Panel/Manage Course Menu. Click on "Modify" for the area you want to make unavailable, and then uncheck the button "Available for Student Users."

Blackboard Content Areas

Translating Course Content into Modules

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