Course Managment Tools

What are Course Managment Tools

Overall, a Learning Management System (LMS) such as OWL includes a variety of tools for supporting course administration, delivery, documentation, teaching, and learning. Course management tools are those tools that serve to support the more administrative or managerial tasks of a course. The focus of this page is upon course management tools specific to OWL.

What is the purpose of Course Managment Tools

Course management tools serve a variety of functions ranging from communicating course structure to supporting course schedules, engagement, time management, etc. The purpose of such tools is to support instructors and students alike in understanding and meeting course expectations, accessing course information, meeting deadlines, and/or tracking one’s engagement in course activities.

How to use Course Managment Tools

Overall, course management tools are designed to support instructors in organizing and sharing course-related information with their students. In OWL, each course management tool serves slightly different functionality. When choosing a tool for managing some aspect of your course, make sure that the tool you’ve selected adequately meets your intended goals. Some ‘best practices’ of course management tools include:

Using the syllabus tool to offer your syllabus in an alternative format that is easily navigated in OWL
Organize Lessons pages by course week, using each lessons home page as an overview of weekly activities, to do lists, links to readings, etc.
Connect your course with the Course Readings Tool to set up a list of readings, resources, and multimedia unique to your course
Outline expectations for all assignments in the Assignments Tool so that students have quick access to details, due dates, and resources such as rubrics
Use the Schedule Tool to communicate important course dates or broadcast changes to scheduled dates

Comparison

	Announcements Tool - OWL	Assignments Tool - OWL	Calendar Tool - OWL	Course Readings - OWL	Lessons Tool - OWL
Total Score	91%	92%	92%	92%	86%
Functionality
Accessibility
Technical
Mobile Design
Usage & Account Set Up
Social Presence
Instructor Presence
Cognitive Presence

	Communicating Expectations, Policies	Course Schedule, Important Dates	Communicating Assessment Structure	Organizing / Sharing Resources	Tracking Progress
Resources (OWL Tool)				✔
Syllabus (OWL Tool)	✔	✔	✔		✔
Schedule (OWL Tool)	✔	✔			✔
Lessons (OWL Tool)	✔	✔		✔	✔
Assignments (OWL Tool)	✔	✔	✔		✔
Gradebook (OWL Tool)			✔		✔
Course Readings				✔	✔

Additional Resources

Here are some OWL course organization strategies that you might consider employing

Course Homepage

Use the course overview page in OWL to display important information to students such as:

The time and location of the course
The instructor(s) names
Preferred methods of student contact

Menu Tab Selection & Organization

Choose OWL course tools carefully. Having too many tools listed in the left-hand menu can be confusing to students. Only choose tools that are actually going to be used in the course.

Set Clear Expectations

Make sure that students know what course management tools you will be using in the course.

Lessons Vs. The Resources Tool

Consider posting your course content in an organized fashion using the lessons tool. This will allow for posting information such as text, resources, tests and quizzes, assignments, forums in an organized way, including by unit or by week. This is potentially superior to the resources tool, which is simply a repository for files

OWL Organization Checklist

Within lessons you are able to add checklists which can help your students manage their work