Need-to-Know for Fall 2024 Courses

• Some instructors, or groups of instructors, combine multiple course sections into one site on UB Learns. By doing so, an instructor only needs to maintain and post content in one course, not multiple courses.
• Combinations need to be done manually by the UB Learns support team.
• Instructors are highly encouraged to submit the request form as early as possible.

• All credit-bearing courses are inactive when they are created in UB Learns.
  
• Instructors must make a course active before students can access the course on the Start Date.
• We recommend that instructors set courses they plan to teach to Course is active when they begin working on the course to prevent students from being locked out of a course on the Start Date.
• When a course is active, students see a grayed-out course tile in the My Courses widget before the Start Date and after the End Date, so they know they are registered, but they cannot access the course until the Start Date.

• An instructor controls when a student can see a course in the My Courses widget and when a student can access a course by using both the Active status and the Start and End Dates.
• When you make your courses active, check the Start and End Dates. The default Start Date for a course is seven days before its official start date.
  
• The default End Date represents the day after the final grading date for the unit.
• If you change the End Date, ensure students have enough time to complete coursework.

If you use Panopto in your course, you must provision the tool. Provisioning Panopto adds an External Learning Tool folder named Panopto Folder Content in a module.

Instructors can build their upcoming semester courses from scratch or copy content from past-term courses.

If you copied content from a past-term course, now is the time to review assessment point values and associated grade items before students submit assessments. Some things to consider:

• Are assessments associated with grade items? If not, select Add to Grade Book from the assessment edit page.
• Do assessments and their associated grade items have different names? You can edit the names of the assessments and grade items so they match.
• Are assessments' maximum point values and associated grade items set correctly?
• Are question point values and total quiz points set correctly?
• Are bonus questions in quizzes set up correctly?

The UB Learns support team can help you review your grade book before the start of the semester.