Before you begin the design of your online content there are some organizational steps worth considering. The order and the way that you present the content to your students will have some effect on their success in your course.

The layout of your course could reflect either, the structure from your course syllabus/outline, the chapters or units in a textbook, or your course schedule. Students generally get a copy of your course outline and or the schedule at the start of the course giving them a picture of what to expect during the course. If your content reflects this structure, they will quickly be able to relate what they see online to what they will be covering in the course.

Choose an organizational approach that will work best for your course. Here are some examples that may assist you to choose.

Topical Layout Approach	Using a topical approach will group links to all the material within a specific topic. Students will not know how long it will take to cover a topic unless you have shown that in their schedule or indicate it as part of the Topic heading.
Chapter Layout Approach	Using a chapter-by-chapter approach has the advantage of keeping the structure in-line with your textbook. It does not however provide a timeline for each chapter so it becomes quite important to include a schedule so the students know when each chapter is dealt with. If you can be consistent with the way that you deal with each chapter in your structure, students will know what to expect as they move through the course.
Timeline Layout Approach	Using a timeline approach does provide students with a clear snapshot of what they are doing when. It is usually a bit more difficult to keep each week’s layout consistent with the previous but consistency is what you should aim for.
Organization by File Type	Another approach is to group like items together. This approach could become confusing for a course that has a lot of material because students will have to go to multiple locations in the list of files to find the ones related to the current topic or week. However, if you are using the LMS as a place to post copies of handouts in a face-to-face course, you may not need to use a timeline or other more complex organizational approach.

Here are a few points to consider:

When you lay out each topic group consistently, students will be able to expect certain types of information in more or less the same spot in each topic.
Using descriptive names for each topic will assist students to know what they are going to get when they click on a link.
The key to a well laid our course is consistency. Many students depend on patterns to assist them to find components in your course.

Although the above examples do not cover every possible type of course, plan you course before you begin to add it online.

Effective Content Management in D2L

By admin | Published: October 26, 2010

Topical Layout Approach	Using a topical approach will group links to all the material within a specific topic. Students will not know how long it will take to cover a topic unless you have shown that in their schedule or indicate it as part of the Topic heading.
Chapter Layout Approach	Using a chapter-by-chapter approach has the advantage of keeping the structure in-line with your textbook. It does not however provide a timeline for each chapter so it becomes quite important to include a schedule so the students know when each chapter is dealt with. If you can be consistent with the way that you deal with each chapter in your structure, students will know what to expect as they move through the course.
Timeline Layout Approach	Using a timeline approach does provide students with a clear snapshot of what they are doing when. It is usually a bit more difficult to keep each week’s layout consistent with the previous but consistency is what you should aim for.
Organization by File Type	Another approach is to group like items together. This approach could become confusing for a course that has a lot of material because students will have to go to multiple locations in the list of files to find the ones related to the current topic or week. However, if you are using the LMS as a place to post copies of handouts in a face-to-face course, you may not need to use a timeline or other more complex organizational approach.

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Effective Content Management in D2L

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