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Fall 2019 Updates and Changes
Highlights
- Editing is always on for the instructor and the edit settings function easily acccessible for each item.
- A cleaner course view, displaying one topic/week at a time.
- A table of contents at the top of the course provides a course overview and easy navigation.
- A customizable course dashboard gives quick access to the course settings, blocks, gradebook and participants.
- Highly responsive to mobile devices.
- The gauge icon in the upper right allows you to edit Activities and Resources.
- Set end dates to your previous courses to move them into a category.
- Current courses are on the Courses tab.
New to Cougar Courses? Or just want a refresher on the basics?
View our New to Cougar Courses Workshop videos.
Quick Tip
View the guide "Change Dates for Activities in One Location" to save time editing the start/end date/time for your Quizzes and Assignments.
Cougar Courses Homepage
Page footer contins links to campus resources:
Personalized View - My Courses
1. Courses tabs
- Current academic year courses display (as cards) by default.
NOTE: Check the Hidden Courses link if you don't see your courses. - Courses with past end dates are in separate tabs.
NOTE: If previous courses are shown on the courses tab, edit the course settings and set an end date to move it to the correct tab. - Students can’t access their previous courses.
2. "Star" a course to keep it at the top .
3. Not published to students: courses are hidden by default. To make it visible, edit the course settings, change from hide to show, and save.
4. Menu
- Add your image to the course "card" by editing your profile and adding an your photo.
Click Profile, select edit profile, scroll down to the User picture section, add a picture, and click update profile. - Preferences - choose how often to receive notifications, including forum emails, forum tracking and messages.
- Grades – direct link to the gradebook for any of your courses.
- Dashboard - offers an alternate, customizable view of your courses and related events and activities.
My Courses - Right column
- See upcoming deadlines, assignments requiring grading, messages, and recent forum posts from all your courses.
- Click any item to go directly to it.
Course View and Navigation
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A linked table of contents shows activity completion for each topic/week.
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Each topic or week is a separate webpage displayed immediately below the table of contents.
- Click the gear to expand
- Select change cover image to add a course header image. The image appears on the My Courses tab as well.
- Choose an image with enough contrast to the white text used for the course name.
- Your image should be 1024 px or longer for best quality.
- Edit the image to the approximate height before uploading.
Create and Manage Course Content
- To edit an activity or resource settings, click the pencil icon below the name.
- To move an item within a topic/section, click the arrow below it, then click move here in the desired location.
- To move an item to a different topic/section, click the arrow below the item or topic name, select the target topic title from the Table of Contents, and select the appropriate move here within that topic.
- To re-order topics or weeks, click on the topic/week you wish to move, click the arrow below the topic name, click on the topic/section in the Table of Contents you wish to place the topic above, and click the green plus icon or the text Place section “x” before section” y”.
- See how many users have submitted an activity, and whether you need to grade any
submission.
- Select activities and resources to add without scrolling down a long list.
Course Dashboard
- Course tools and blocks are all in one location.
- Select Course Dashboard from the Table of Contents.
- Edit blocks - add, delete, configure, and reorder blocks.
- Course Settings - modify end date, change format: topics or weekly
- Participants - message selected students and check last course access.
Course Progress - In the My Courses view, you and your students may notice a progress fraction and percentage listed on the course "card'. This tracks the cumulative Activity Completion for all items in the course.
- The default Activity Completion setting for every item is “students can manually mark the activity as completed.”
- As a student manually checks the boxes next to items, the percentage next to the course on the Dashboard will increase.
- You can change the Activity Completion for each item to either “do not indicate activity completion” to remove it from being tracked or “Show activity as complete when conditions are met” to have the system automatically mark it as completed when the student meet certain conditions you set. To learn more about Activity Completion, see our help guide.
- To turn off this feature, while in your course go to your Course Dashboard, select edit course settings, settings, scroll to the Completion Tracking section, change the setting to No, and Save. You (and your students) will then no longer see the percentage on the course card.
