In collaboration with IT and the Teaching Commons, we’re happy to provide our instructors and faculty with this basic Blackboard template
Designed with the goal of reducing decision fatigue—with time-sensitive course construction in mind—the template serves as a starting benchmark for instructors to upload into their courses and then populate with their content and material. This template structure follows the Read, Watch, Do model proposed in our 2020 Going the Distance Workshops, meaning that after rearranging the pre-loaded navigation menu, all you have to do is work your way through our list of what to put and where to put it.
Bear in mind, uploading our template will overwrite the courses’ existing contents. If you’re tight on time or need to scale up courses from scratch, the template is a great way to start building. If you’ve already begun building, we propose you consider the following points of interest that our template seeks to accentuate:
- Clean and clear ordering of the left-hand navigation pane
- Organizing your courses with learning modules (like units or nodes)
- Contextualizing material before and afterward (with a modular structure in mind)
Over time, and with your feedback and support, we can work to improve future iterations of the template to better accommodate rapid construction and articulate design. As such, the template can and should evolve over time—with changes cited here for reference.
If you are not under a tight time constraint and would like the support of the Teaching Commons team to develop your course, please consider our course development services.
To view and download the template, please visit the IT User Guide on the Trent IT Website.