In this video we’re going to talk you through the main features of the course site and its navigation. 

Homepage 

If you’re watching this, then you must be on the course homepage, so this is where we’ll start our tour. Before we get started, although this course is optimised to display well on all devices, due to their size, some interactive features might not display well on a mobile, so we always recommend you use a laptop or desktop computer to interact with the course if possible. If you are using a mobile device and something isn’t displaying well, try switching between portrait and landscape to get the best view. If something is still not accessible for you, please let us know and we will make sure we find a way to get the content to you in a way that you can access. Okay, so now, let’s begin.

Profile

The first thing to note is in the top-right of the course homepage where you will find your PROFILE menu. This is where you can update your profile in formation and also find any working groups that you will be a member of as the course progresses. The course materials will guide you through adding a profile picture, contacting other course participants and finding your groups as and when you need to do these things, so don’t worry about that for now, but feel free to have a look through these menus and maybe add some information to your profile. 

Quick links

Moving down the screen now, below the welcome videos, first you’ll come to the useful links section where you can quickly access a few important documents and pages: the course outline, an additional resource section and a course FAQ. As you scroll through the homepage, and the rest of the site, you’ll probably notice the Take notes tab following you around. This is a note-taking tool that is built into the website and is available for you to use throughout the course. You’ll be introduced to the note-taking tool in the Orientation Unit but for now you just need to know that there’s a link on the homepage to show you all of your notes. 

Meeting room

Next you’ll find a link to a video-conferencing room that will be available throughout the course. As you’ll see, there are two suggested times for meeting up but you can use the room at any time if you want an online space to meet with other course participants. There is no booking system, so this might mean, of course, that you enter the room and it’s already being used, in which case we just ask that you respectfully let the people who are already in the room finish before having your own discussion. 

Forum

When it comes to taking part in forum discussions, we strongly recommend you wait until you encounter the forum tasks as you work through the units, as each forum task is embedded into the sequence of activities and will draw upon the content that leads up to it. However, on the homepage you will be able to see a summary of the latest posts. So this is provided to help you keep up with the development of the forum tasks you have already contributed to. You can also click the View complete forum button to see all forum topics on one page. This opens in a new page, so once you’ve finished here, the easiest way to return to the homepage is to close the tab. 

Course Structure

At the bottom of the page you will find the course outline. The course is divided into 8 units and each unit is further divided into a number of topics, or lessons. Under each unit, you’ll be able to see when it goes live. When approaching a unit for the first time, we suggest you click on the Unit title as this will take you to the Unit welcome page, which includes the unit’s aims. When you are coming back to a unit you’ve already started, you can click on the Expand arrow which will show you the list of topics in the unit so you can navigate back to where you left off. Each of these little circles indicates your progress through the topics so you will easily be able to see where you left off.

Navigation within a course page

We’ll now have a look at a typical course page. First let’s look at navigation. Each topic begins with a statement of the lesson focus and the estimated time to complete. At the top of the page you will see buttons to navigate to the next and previous page, and you’ll find these repeated at the bottom of the page too. Under this you’ll find the breadcrumbs, these links which you can use to return to the unit summary page or back to the course homepage. To the left you can see the course structure and this can be used to hop directly to a specific topic. You can also return to the course homepage by clicking here. 

Think first

Throughout the course you will find a wide variety of activity types and we’ll explain what you need to do as we go, but I’d just like to highlight some of our main activity types, which can be seen in this page. First we have a Think first activity. For these activities we would like you to spend a few moments thinking about the question first, and it might be helpful to make some quick notes. These kinds of questions will be easy to spot because of the switch at the top. After you have spent some time thinking about your answer, clicking on the switch will reveal an answer, suggested answer or some other kind of feedback. 

Reflection questions

Next, distinguished by the thinking icon, are reflection questions. These will require a deeper level of thinking and generally involve relating the material to your own context, so there isn’t a suggested answer for these questions. Although we won’t keep telling you to take notes, these questions would be really useful points to stop and take deeper notes because they may come in handy if you are applying for a teacher training position, to show you are able to relate key issues to your own context. 

Interactive tasks

The course also has many interactive tasks which appear in these shaded boxes. These include quizzes, flashcards, drag and drop activities and activities like this one where you will need to enter your answer into a text box. 

Forums 

One more activity type I’d like to mention is the forums. I’ve already mentioned these, but I just wanted to show you an example. So here you can see how the forum discussion is an integral part of the topic structure, so please wait until you encounter the forum topic before getting involved in order to get the most out of it. You can then use the summary on the homepage to keep up-to-date with the discussion.

Final thoughts

The second to last topic in each unit is called Final Thoughts. This is a place for you to share thoughts, ideas, resources, questions and anything else you would like to share about the unit. Although it appears at the end of each unit, you don’t need to wait until you work through all of the material in the unit if there is something you’d like to share. Just use the navigation menu on the left to skip ahead and add your post in the relevant comment. As you work through the unit, even if you haven’t posted yourself, have a look at the Padlet (which might involve using the scroll bar) and read any comments left by others and of course we’d love it if you respond to anything you find interesting or can help with.