Reasons to consider using a course template

The College of Science (CoS) Brightspace course template offers several modifiable, pre-loaded common components to get your next course started, or to enhance an existing one. This template is a starter structure that can be used for in-person, hybrid, or online courses. The template includes these components:

• a course homepage, 
• syllabus, 
• get started page, 
• Week/Module/topic pages, 
• and simplified navigation.

The course template is a helpful resource designed to provide a high-quality learning experience for students and preserve your time in course design and maintenance. By offering consistent design across the College’s science courses, students will spend more time on content and less time trying to navigate each course page or site.

The course template is accessible by design. Any additional content you add to the template will need to be made accessible, per the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 that Purdue is required to follow. A streamlined and intuitive organization is helpful to all students - allowing them to find information easily and quickly.

College of Science and Engineering faculty worked with the Teaching and Learning Technology instructional design team to create this course template using best practices in course design. You can use the course template for any face-to-face, hybrid, and online course to host an entire course or just a few components.  

What is in the Brightspace course template?

The CoS course template (zipped file, 23 MB) consists of 16 weekly modules, with a landing page followed by activities and assignments. Once imported, each of the resources can be used as-is or edited to support your teaching needs. 

• Start Here Module: customize the welcome message, specify essential details for students to be successful in the course, and add a course description.  
  • Sub-module pages include instructor information, student success resources, student academic support, university policies, academic integrity acknowledgment, and a sample syllabus quiz.
• Module Landing Page: each module has an Overview page with an introduction to the content of the week, a place to list student learning objectives, and a weekly roadmap of assignments or activities. Customize the information in each area. Instructor Notes are bolded and in brackets to guide you to areas for editing.  
  • Sub-module pages include learning materials, recitation, discussions, assignments, and resources/summaries. 
  • Each component can be edited in a way that makes sense for your course.
• Syllabus: The syllabus contains the required components for a Purdue syllabus. Please refer to the Purdue syllabus guidelines for the latest version of the Purdue syllabus required components and the additional recommended components.
• Module/Course Site Organization: content in each module can be reordered to meet your course needs.
• For Instructors Only Template Resource Guide: A course section that is hidden from students’ view which can be a great location for you to store course documents. This can be especially helpful if multiple instructors teach the same course.

How to import the template into your course

Watch this video or read the instructions below to learn how to import the Brightspace template (zipped, 23 MB) into a course of your choosing.

Instructions on how to import the Brightspace template (Word: 4.70 MB)

Need help with the course template? 

Support for Brightspace is provided by Purdue’s Innovative Learning Team. Virtual drop-in sessions are available to instructors and teaching assistants to learn more about how to use Brightspace at Purdue. Upcoming Brightspace drop-in sessions schedule.

Faculty can also email questions to the Consulting and Training team. If you have comments or suggestions about the course template, fill out our survey.

 

Acknowledgments

The resources and materials presented here are based on the Purdue Science & Engineering FYO Brightspace Template which was developed by a team of experienced faculty teaching large-enrollment classes at the Purdue College of Science and College of Engineering with support from Purdue TLT and Purdue Online as part of the First Year Online Project (FYO). The template was initially developed for use with online courses but can be applied to online, hybrid, or residential courses, providing a unified and high-quality learning experience for our students and preserving instructor time investment in course design and maintenance.

We would like to acknowledge the Purdue University faculty and staff that helped create the basis for all materials presented here.

College of Science

• Biological Sciences: Donna Fekete, Dennis Minchella
• Chemistry: Jonathan Rienstra-Kiracofe
• Computer Science: William Crum, Randy Bond, Monica Shively
• Mathematics: Phil Mummert, Jonathon Peterson, Joe Chen, Kenji Matsuki, Aaron Yip
• Physics: Carina Rebello, Sanjay Rebello
• College of Science: Peristera Paschou, Dennis Minchella, Angie Teel, Julia Sanders, Nina Haghighi

College of Engineering

• First Year Engineering: Sean Brophy, Kerrie Douglas, Jill Folkerts, Isabel Jinenez-Useche, Tamara Moore, Eric Nauman, Larry Nies, William Oakes, Matthew Ohland, Senay Purzer, Carla Zoltowski
• College of Engineering: Alina Alexeenko, Nina Robinson

Purdue Online/TLT

• Tim Lombardo, Sarah Crago, Cody Connor, Jason Fish, Donna Cumberland

Web Design (College of Science/Purdue Online)

• Nina Haghighi, Julia Sanders