Getting Your Course Ready For The Upcoming Semester, Part II: Content and Resources

As you get ready for a new semester, let’s have a quick look at your content and resources.

Inventory all your perishable course assets (web links, dated content, Echo360 recordings, articles, etc.) and identify what may need to be edited, replaced, or removed.
Create a Faculty Resources module and only make it visible to those enrolled in this course as instructors. Having such a place enables the academic department to capture the experience of all those who have taught the course (think of the talent we lose to retirement, for instance) and pass that on to all those yet to teach the course. This module is a good place to store:
- the course development plan explaining how the course was designed
- the DOC version of documents normally presented to students in PDF format (e.g., syllabus, grading rubrics, text lectures, etc.), for easy retrieval from term to term — this is especially useful in cases where courses often change instructors
- a list of all digital course assests, such as ECHO 360 recordings
- a list of additional/optional resources
- a list of things that need to be updated for the next semester (as mentioned under point 1, above)
- etc.
Need a course pack? A course pack is a compilation of copyright-cleared course materials put into one easy-to-access place for students. Course packs can supplement or replace a course textbook. For assistance in building a course pack, please contact me.

What do you do from semester to semester to get your course content and resources ready? Please leave a comment. I’d love to hear from you!

Note: This post is part of a series of three posts meant to help faculty get ready for the new semester. The other two posts are:

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