Overview

• Consistent format across all units is key when designing national units. Inconsistency in the location of activities and resources can have a significant impact on cognitive load for students.
• Recommended all communication is contained within the Communication and Support section of the LEO unit. A clear communication strategy for teaching staff and students is important in delivery national units.
• Using LEO Groups with national units, and restricting activities such as assignments by Banner group or tutorial groups, will assist in managing units with large numbers of students and avoid confusion.
• Campus tiles can be useful for very large units. However, it is recommended that core unit content and resources be available to all students in the weekly or module tiles.

On this page

Communication and support section

All communication that happens via the forum activities in LEO, should do so at the national level and be placed in the Communication and Support section of the LEO unit. Campus based communication between teaching staff and students can be clearly established and limited to direct email – especially if it is of a personal nature.

A LEO unit has one news forum - Announcements from Staff. This is a special type of forum, which has forced subscription for all participants. Posts in this forum appear in the ‘latest announcements’ block. In national units, it is recommended that all communication related to the unit be conducted via this forum. For campus specific announcements, teaching staff can use the separate groups option to deliver the announcement to a specific banner or tutorial group. This is important to assist in reducing the students’ email load.

The general unit discussion allows students to post questions they have regarding the unit – most commonly those around assessments. Encouraging all questions to be posted by students to this one forum provides all students with the same information, and can reduce the repetition of questions, as well as the load on teaching staff. At a national level we recommend a rotating roster by teaching staff across all campuses to manage and respond to students’ questions. The general unit discussion can also be set up with visible groups to allow discussion either at a campus level, or at a university-wide level.

Assessment section

Assignment activities should be placed in the Assessment section of the LEO unit. For larger national units (more than 400 students), we recommend one assignment activity is created for each banner cohort, with access and visibility set to only show the relevant drop box for students. For smaller cohorts, we recommend using a single assignment activity that is not restricted to any specific cohort and using the separate groups setting to allow the teaching team to filter their specific cohort of students for marking.

Groups

Integrating the groups available to LEO - from Banner and Tutorial Direct, will assist in managing your LEO unit and avoid confusion students may face when completing activities. When a banner cohort or tutorial direct group is linked to a LEO unit, they can be linked to activities and resources via the restriction settings. Students will only see the activities that are restricted to their group.

When restricting assignment activities to groups, it is recommended that you follow these guidelines.

• For smaller units - under 400 students, create one assignment and turn on separate groups in the activity settings. All students will submit to the one assignment drop box. Teaching staff will be able to filter the submissions to their group for marking.
• For larger units – over 400 students, create one assignment for each banner cohort and add a group restriction for each activity. In the restriction settings, click on the eye icon to hide the activity from all other groups.

Campus sections

Individual sections for specific campuses are best used sparingly. Content in a teaching unit can usually be available to all students. Even state-based information can contribute to students contextualising their understanding and knowledge.

If there is a need for campus tiles:

• Limit content in campus tiles to zoom links, tutorial resources and teaching team contact details.
• Avoid placing any discussion forums in the campus tile.
• Consider whether other cohorts might benefit from any content before adding it to a campus tile.
• Restrict each campus tile to the banner cohort group and click on the eye icon to hide the activity from all other groups.
• Use the LEO template image for each campus tile