Courses Checklist for a New Academic Term

As you get started with a new academic term, we want to remind you of the most common items professors do at the beginning of a new semester/trimester.

Faculty Checklist:

1. Access Courses (powered by Sakai).
2. Publish your class site so that students can see and access it.
3. Post and publish your syllabus to inform students of learning objectives and requirements.
4. Reorder your site tabs to access your classes quickly and easily.
5. Add or remove tools to engage students in learning activities.
6. Reorder your tools to focus student attention.
7. Add documents and web links to Resources to share learning materials.
8. Set up your gradebook to securely share academic progress with your students.
9. Copy course materials from a previous semester to repurpose your hard work.
10. Combine class rosters if you are teaching cross-listed classes or multiple sections of the same class but want to manage only one site.

Other Common Items

• Add Participants to add a teaching assistant, graduate assistant, or co-instructor.
• Hide old class sites to streamline and speed up your experience.
• Create Lessons to embed content and structure student learning and engagement.
• Take Attendance to help measure student participation.

See Also:

• TechLearn Video Center for training and webinars on Courses, Turnitin, Zoom, and more
• Class Distribution Email Lists
• Courses Class Site Creation Schedule
• Courses Enrollment Update Schedule
• Zoom Documentation for Faculty
• Google Training and Documentation for Faculty
• Pepperdine Libraries: Library Resources for Teaching

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