Hello and Welcome
We are thrilled to introduce you to UArizona Course Maker! We are excited to share with you a new experience in customizing courses in the learning management system.
When we started this journey a while back, we had a radical idea, can we create a system that meets the needs of students, instructors, and instructional designers? Can we create a system that empowers all types of course makers to create the learning experiences they want?
After hours of research, testing, planning, and documenting, Course Maker was born.
Highlights
One of our first goals with Course Maker was to make it easy for all course makers to jump in and start using the Course Maker. So that they can create the learning experiences they want for in-person, blended, or online classes.
- Get Started: The Get Started tutorial walks a brand new user through the features, benefits, and templates in the Starter Kit. The Get Started tutorial includes instructions on installing and customizing the included templates.
- Starter Kit: The centerpiece for the Course Maker is the Course Maker Starter Kit. The Starter Kit includes all the essential components for the Course Maker, and it is more than a collection of templates. Once it's installed on your D2L site, you can choose how you want to build and customize your course.
- Build Overview: The Course Maker has three distinct ways to build courses.
- Page Templates. Page templates are perfect for everyone who wants a quick and easy way to build their course.
- Page Builder. The page builder is perfect for course makers who want to create impactful custom page layouts. The page builder is an interactive tool that lets you visualize and lay out a page without needing how to code.
- Building Blocks. Building blocks are perfect for users who know HTML and want to control every aspect of their pages. As their name suggests, the building blocks make up the individual components that make up the Course Maker. You can add one, five, or ten to any page to create engaging learning experiences.
- Updates: Course Maker is a living system that will grow and evolve over time. That means transparency between the developers and the course makers using the system is essential.
- FAQs: Ensuring that course makers have a voice and can get support when they need it is essential. Course makers have a variety of ways to request help and find answers to common questions.
Growing the System
The Course Maker is a living system. It requires a strong community of course makers to contribute their ideas and creations. The Community section of the Course Maker website brings all types of course makers together to share their ideas, tips, tricks, and resources.
Do you have an idea for a template? or Building Block? Course makers can submit ideas for building blocks, templates, or other features for future releases.
The Course Maker Blog features articles, inspirations, how-to's, and other resources from course makers across the University of Arizona campus.
Roadmap
There will be a lot of moving and shaking over the next few months as we work out the bugs, add some more building blocks and templates.
Phase 1 - Pilot Phase and Initial Release
Phase 2 - Course Maker available to UArizona camps wide.
Right now, Course Maker is what we are calling Phase 1, or a pilot phase.
We are working with a small group of instructional designers, technologists, and instructors during this time. Our goals for Phase 1 are to work out bugs, finalize a few additional Building Blocks and templates, and improve the documentation and other processes so that the transition to Phase 2 is seamless.
We hope by Summer 2022 that we can enter Phase 2 and open the Course Maker up to the UArizona campus-wide. After we enter Phase 2, we will start collecting ideas, resources, and documentation from course makers to plan for Phase 3 and beyond.
Do you have an idea that you want to share? Let us hear about it!
Thank You/Acknowledgments
Finally, we want to take a moment to thank some key players for making Course Maker happen:
- A special thank you to the leadership team: Melody, Lisa, Sarah, Matt, Janet, Tess. Without your support, this project would not have even left the ground.
- Thank you to current and former IDs at Digital Learning. They inspired this whole system through creativity and their ability to think outside the box.
- Thank you to web developer assistants Jeff and Jason for your awesome contributions to the project.
- Thank you to D2L Team for their ideas, expertise, and enthusiasm for Course Maker.
- Thank you to the DRC for their knowledge and expertise to ensure that components are built for all learners.
Finally, thank you to the instructors, students, and various other units on campus that made this effort possible. We look forward to seeing how the system will evolve with your creativity.