Ceilings and floors of a course home page

Picture the instructional designer. Putting together a course home page on the institutional LMS. How do you want to “dress” this page? To impress? Do we reflect the department or faculty “brand”. Do we watch the intended user, noticing how they interact with the page, and then make changes. Do we make the interface intuitive and pleasing on the eye. Satisfy wayfinding and aesthetic preferences with a complimentary corporate colour scheme, a dash of white space, icons and breadcrumbs.

Or do we look away from the screen and consider the values that are congruent with the discipline. Creativity, participation, integrity? Then identify an “expected action” that arises from these values. We have the ingredients on these platforms to make personal connections, individual welcomes, to offer each other generous hospitality. We also have a choice of learning designs to draw from for inspiration for the action possibilities. Our home page choices implicitly talk to your values. Paying attention to being present, to humanizing this mediated and impersonal space, to building on loose ties, forging the beginnings of a community of practice.

I am a fan of beautiful design. This conversation about the course home page is not an “either-or” argument. Its more a “yes-and” discussion. Dressing up course pages has to also be about what you value on the course, be more that a “prettyfication” exercise. Branding guidelines or latest promotional campaign can be applied later. This is the place to to introduce yourself; for finding your voice; for signaling what is to come; for developing a class community and for preparing the way for these possibilities, with a focus on students. Far more important than styling an outfit.

My sequence of actions, when designing the course home page, is to

• recognize the student’s context
• acknowledge the degree to which the medium is fully available, and
• identify ingredients on the platform that foster these actions.
• take small steps that prompt these “action possibilities”.
• Then dress up the course home page

Let’s look at the front matter of a tatty textbook? Might these initial pages, a forward, preface and introduction, be where we find a model inspiration from. These pages are often glossed over. But they act as an initial container for an author to share their backstory, their expectations, offer an explanation as to why the work was compiled, and a desire for possible outcomes.

Or lets look at the physical features of an ordinary classroom. Jal Mehita and Sara Fine, in their book “In Search of Deeper Meaning”, use a metaphor of “Ceiling and Floor” to describe the minimum requirements (floor) and highest expectations (ceiling) in a class situation. It is here, in the course home page where students and their teachers encounter both the constraints and enablers of the learning experience. How a recognition of materiality (floors and ceilings) becomes as important as dressing up the page.

I’m often involved in a course homepage discussion. I’d suggest that the course home page needs to primarily signal a certain intention. Help the student to know how they will be taught (the floor) as well as assisting them to comprehend the expectations around their performance and day to day practicalities (the ceiling).

So, can we do this? Here’s five archetypes to consider, and make choices about.

• An essential, text driven page. Numbered headings, short introductory briefs, and links from summaries create an organized and consistent logic for the user to follow. 
• A balanced table driven page that is arranged in a grid format. The cells in the table contains clickable buttons and/or thumbnails that identify high impact course activities and lead the student further to these features or content
• A coordinated corporate look and feel page that promotes the brand. Intended to project credibility, the page offers positive first impressions and reinforce a particular identity.
• scheduled release page where all content is modularized and topics are released according to what students know or are confident in. Each topic contains readings and learning activities. Larger assignments hold the modules together
• “personalized” page filled either with notifications, replies and an activity stream. Information is arranged into widgets or blocks and changes regularly. Students can immediately click through and engage further. 

What’s the most important factor to consider when putting together a course home page? 

I’ve argued that to much effort is placed on an initial eye catching design and too little is placed on surfacing values.. The overall result is a spruced up content dump. A pleasant to look at and easily navigated page. Creating a learning experience that prompts engagement and activity on the part of the student requires expressed values. Discussion boards don’t initiate debate. Tools don’t lead to conversations. .

My advice, if you want to build a course that student will want to come back to, is to develop a course architecture that surfaces your values and is designed around the action possibilities available to students. Look for strategies that lead to presence, connections and community on the course home page. Make students feel as if they belong.

Ten places to share values and develop action possibilities form the course home page. 

1. Create a bio profile of yourself and prepare a brief video or audio clip where you introduce yourself and the course topic to the class. Presence is important when going online. Present your best teacher self and set the mood for the semester.
2. Pin a “Welcome message” at the top of the announcements and/or the Course Homepage. Greet and welcome them warmly. You are the host, and this is when you can legitimately gush while informing them about the basics (how to get started and how to get help) without insulting them.
3. Consider how students will become comfortable and confident on the platform. Perhaps design an infographic with useful tips that they can save on their phones. Or create a a separate page that sits off the course site with different helpdesk resources. You might also provide them methods for obtaining assistance in case of an “emergency”
4. This may seem a bit obvious, but compose an email to students, introducing yourself and pointing them to your bio (see point 1), referring to the welcome message on  the course (see point 2) and providing help related information (see point 3)  This email will probably be accessed repeatedly.
5. Duplicate static information. You may have essentially the same information as in your welcome email, welcome announcement and your personal introduction. Because it’s the web, students often scan through information, to find the content. Duplicated information, in an online environment, is probably beneficial. Although be sure to use static content (information that won’t change) when you duplicate the message.   
6. Ask the students to emulate your friendly introduction and offer a similar personal introduction to themselves. Remember to link them to your example 
7. Set up a “Class Lounge.” as your back channel. Find a place where everyone is comfortable with informal conversations. Within the LMS, use the forum tool (chat can be a headache). If data is precious, then use a mobile platform, where students usually can connect on a social level. Don’t abuse this space. But see it as a vehicle to offer class members a head up.
8. Establish “office hours”. In addition, or as a complement to, the Class Lounge, create a regular slot in your calender called “office hours”. Students know that they can drop in. Or you can invite invite a students for one-to-one appointments.
9. Consider accessibility. In all communications, particularly early on when establishing “first impressions,” strive to be approachable, supportive, and actively interested in mentoring them. This disposition will involve some technical effort on your part. But when a course is universally accessibility, everybody benefits.
10. Build a learning community. Encourage students get connect to you and each other (point 1 and 6). Find ways to create cohesion (point 7) form pairs, define common connections. Provide meaningful interactions.  

A course homepage is both a design choice and a collection of action recipes that pull together an amazing set of ingredients. The course hompage can reframe the unfamiliar and solitary experience of digital learning . Use this page to reach out and communicate these possibilities with students. Or, haul out the style guide. The dry content dump needs to be branded. Let’s carry on creating course eye candy.