10.2. Course Launching Activities
To launch a course, you prepare the course itself, the staff, and the
students. This section includes a course launch checklist that you can use as a model for your schedule of activities.
To help you communicate to the course team or to all course participants
before the course launches and while it is running, you can send email messages
from the Instructor Dashboard. See Bulk Email. The section on bulk email
also includes a set of example messages to students that you can use as guidelines when you write your own email
messages.
10.2.1. Course Launch Checklist
As the start date for your course approaches, a checklist or time line of
activities can help you make sure that your course, and your students, are
ready to begin. Suggestions for activities to complete before your course
starts follow.
Verify Course Settings
Verify Certificates
Review First Week Content
- Verify that all units are present and published. See Developing Course Units.
- Verify that videos, transcripts, and download links are in place and
working.
- Check all assignments for completeness and verify their due dates. See
Working with Problem Components.
- Use edX Insights to review the answers that beta testers submitted for
problems, and to proofread your display names, accessible labels, and answer
text.
- Review feedback from the course team and beta testers to be sure that the
content has been thoroughly reviewed and tested.
Welcome Students
- Two months before the course start date, prepare and send a welcome email
message to currently enrolled students. See Pre-launch Reminder and
Send Email Messages to Course Participants.
- Compose a welcome message and add it to the Course Info page. See
Add a Course Update.
- Verify that a syllabus and other references are available on the Course
Handouts page. See Identify a Course Handout.
- One month before the course start date, prepare and send a welcome email
message to currently enrolled students.
- One week before the course start date, prepare and send a welcome email
message to currently enrolled students.
- Add an “Introduce Yourself” post to a discussion topic. For a MOOC, you may
want to manage the size of the thread by distributing student responses
across multiple threads. For example, you can start different threads for
introductions based on geographical location, such as “Introduce Yourself:
Europe”, “Introduce Yourself: North America”, etc. See
Run a Discussion.
- On the course start date, prepare and send a launch email message to
currently enrolled students. See Launch Day Welcome.
Prepare the Course Team
- Define communication methods for all course contributors, including team
members with the Staff, Admin, and discussion moderation team roles. For
example, set up a course-specific email address.
- Verify that all course contributors know how to record their work, report
issues, and collaborate on tasks.
- Verify that the admins and staff selected for your course
have the correct role assignments in the LMS. See Staffing.
- Verify that the people you have given the Discussion Admin, Discussion
Moderator, and Discussion Community TA roles have registered and activated
their user accounts and enrolled in the course. See
Assign Discussion Administration Roles. Note that team members with the Admin and
Staff roles must also be given one of these roles to have discussion
moderation privileges.
- Define methods for managing discussions and guidance for discussion
moderators, and distribute to the discussion team. See
Moderate Discussions and Guidance for Discussion Moderators.