This checklist is designed to guide you through the key steps for preparing your course each semester. Following these steps will help ensure that your syllabus, course materials, and Moodle site are ready for students. Click on the arrow beside each checklist item for more information about that item.
Create and Finalize Your Syllabus
Your syllabus is the foundation of your course. Use the Manhattan University Syllabus Template to create a clear, complete guide for students, that outlines course information, policies, structure, grading, and available supports.
Update syllabus header with the course’s name and number as well as the current semester and year.
Enter the course section number, meeting days and times, location, and delivery modality. Also provide your name, email, office location, and office hours so students know how and when to contact you.
Insert the official course description from the academic catalog. Also list the specific learning goals students should achieve by the end of the course (use action verbs like “analyze,” “apply,” etc.)
The course goals are the core expression of what your students should learn. Do your lectures and course materials teach them? Do your assignments help the students achieve them?
List all required textbooks and additional materials (e.g., software, online resources), providing relevant details such as author, edition, and ISBN.
Outline clear expectations for student engagement and explain how absences and participation will impact their grade.
Clearly explain how you will communicate with students (e.g., through Moodle Announcements), how quickly they can expect email responses, and what to do in case of urgent issues.
Outline when assignments are due, the consequences for late submissions, and any exceptions or extensions you may allow.
Enter the appropriate delivery modality description (i.e. synchronous, synchronous events, videos, discussion use, etc.) using the boilerplate text provided in the template, and remove any text related to modalities that do not apply to this course.
Provide a brief description of the course structure (e.g., modules, weeks, format) and complete the course schedule table with dates, topics, readings, and key assignments/deliverables for each week.
Provide introductory information about larger projects that factor significantly in students’ grades, along with grading criteria. Also describe how students’ final course grades will be calculated.
Even if you’ve used these assignments before, take a look at them. Can the instructions be changed to reduce the common mistakes students make when submitting? Should you update the articles students respond to, in order to make your course more topical?
Review the pre-populated university policies to ensure you are familiar with them and they are up to date, especially if reusing a previous syllabus.
Review the pre-populated resources and support information to ensure you are familiar with it and it is up to date, especially if reusing a previous syllabus.
Prepare and Update Your Moodle Course Site
Set up your Moodle course site to match your syllabus and provide students with easy access to course content, assignments, and communication.
Upload your syllabus following the instructions in our tutorial on adding files.
If you've taught the course recently, and want to re-use a previous semester's Moodle content, you can import your old class and edit it for this semester. If you want to copy over only a few items from a previous semester, rather than an entire course, use the Sharing Cart block.
If you've added a course template or are using a pre-developed (master) course, be sure to review and customize the content for your specific class.
Using the Onsite Course Template? Learn how to upload and customize the template.
If you copied old Turnitin assignments into your new class, you'll need to use the Course Reset screen to ensure that previous Turnitin assignments will work with your new course.
If you use Edpuzzle for any of your videos, you should not reuse Edpuzzle assignments that you've copied from another course. Doing so may leave some students unable to access the copied Edpuzzle assignments. Please delete any copied Edpuzzle assignments and re-add them as new Edpuzzle assignments.
This is an issue that Edpuzzle is aware of, and they're working on fixing it.
You can set the due dates for assignments, open/close times for quizzes, and dates for Turnitin assignments all on one page using the Dates Report.
Before the course is made visible to students, review all links and content to ensure everything is up to date and working correctly.
Click through each section of your course and check that:
- All links to external websites and resources are active and direct students to the correct page.
- Videos and multimedia files play properly and are still accessible.
- Dates, instructions, and terminology are accurate for the current semester.
- Attached documents (like PDFs and Word files) open correctly and reflect the latest course information.
You're the teacher for your course, so what you see on Moodle doesn't exactly match what the students see. Once your course is ready for students, double-check it by viewing your course as a student. This is a good time to make sure that the correct items are visible to or hidden from students.
By default, Moodle courses are invisible to students to give you a chance to set up your course. When you're done, make your course visible.
You can let the students know the course is ready by using the Announcements forum to send the class a message. A message will be sent to the Manhattan College email account of all students enrolled in the class. The announcement will also be visible by clicking on the Announcements forum itself. You must make your course visible before doing this, or the announcement will not be emailed.
Interested in exploring additional ways to design a student-friendly Moodle course? Check out our Course Guidelines & Tips for Using Moodle.