Setting up an "open" or self-paced course in Brightspace

Trudy.H.857

Hi

We have a program that wants to have course that is open for 1 year and have different students start in it at different times to complete the course over a 4-6 week recommended schedule. Any suggestions on how to set this course up in Brightspace (also we do not currently have Discover)? The students would complete on their own and not engage with any other learners in course. It is basically a knowledge only course.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

Trudy (ASC for Brightspace)

Dana.K.940

Hi Trudy,

I help run the Brightspace Teaching & Learning Certificate Program on a very similar schedule/suggested timeline, so I wanted to chime in here. Having said that, my suggestions are coming from a program with enrollment around 500-600, so if your program is anticipating smaller (let's say less than 50) numbers, some of the suggestions below will have a more limited impact.

One thing I can suggest is to make use of Intelligent Agents. You can use these to unenroll people at the 12 month mark, but also provide check-ins and reminders about suggested timelines for completion. The criteria for the unenrollment agent would be to use a release condition (under the classlist header, followed by the "date of enrollment in current org unit option") to unenroll 365 days after enrollment, combined with the role in the course, combined with adding and Action to "Change User Enrollments" and select "unenroll from current course" in the drop-down menu. The check-in agents would not require any actions, just the date condition. Note: consider how you want to manage data/completion tracking of users before you go this direction! Consider if you need to capture monthly or quarterly enrollments/completions with reporting/tracking of any sort.

If you go the route of using an intelligent agent for unenrollment, another item to consider how you will handle requests for extensions to accessing the course. One way to do this is setting one up a combination of intelligent agent and extension role for the inevitable extension that someone need at the 12 month mark: this way, you have something ready to allow participants to stay in the course that, once set, is automated and won't require you to remember dates to enroll/unenroll. This would involve creating an "extension" role (copying the existing role, just changing the new name), and changing the participant to this extension role so that they are not automatically unenrolled when a year of enrollment passes.

You have probably already created a suggested timeline for completion (with the modules/content that should be done by each phase), but if not I suggest having that front and center early on. You can link to this schedule in any reminders sent out.

Although there is no facilitation, I also suggest finding a way to allow participants to reach out to someone should they run into a technical issue or have a question about the content; this can be done with a discussion (using the option "moderator must approve posts" to keep posts hidden from other participants), a custom widget with an email or other contact info, or even a custom navbar link.

Other things we have noticed that work well with self-paced open courses are making "Getting Started" instructions very, very clear, adding in badges to mark key completion points, as well as checking in frequently for feedback.