Emails, I get emails. Lots of them. Most of which are requests from faculty for help with their courses in D2L, and most of those are about courses that were designed in the absence of—or refusal of—input from an instructional designer (someone, shall we say, like yours truly). And most of the issues for which those emails plead help could be easily avoided by following some simple guidelines. So, in the spirit of making life simpler and less stressful for everyone involved with online, hybrid, or web-enhanced courses, I offer some suggestions:

Make Names Consistent

A common complaint is students not being able to find something that’s listed in the syllabus, but apparently nowhere in the course itself. Often the root of the problem is that an assignment is named one thing in the syllabus, and another in the course (and/or still another in the gradebook). If your assignment is listed as Week 3 Short Paper in the syllabus, but your submission/Dropbox folder is labeled Analysis of Huckleberry Finn, you can expect to field questions and/or excuses from students who can’t figure out what they’re supposed to do. Make things easier for students by making sure an item is named consistently, and things will be easier for you as well.

Make Dates Consistent

Consistency is key here as well. If your syllabus includes due dates for assignments (which it should), then make sure you include those dates in the course as well. D2L and other modern learning management systems allow you to set due dates (along with start/end dates) for assignments and other items, and display those dates in the course calendar. Keep those dates aligned with what you have in your syllabus and you’ll prevent lots of student confusion manifesting in your inbox. One caveat: do not put due dates in the text of an assignment description or title. If you do, and subsequently copy the course, you’ll need to find and edit every instance of those dates to make sure they’re consistent with your syllabus, etc.

Keep Other Information Consistent

Some faculty will post their assignment instructions or supplemental material as a news item, again as a separate webpage or PDF, and again as an attachment to a submission folder. This practice is an invitation for trouble, because there isn’t necessarily a correlation between an attachment and a course file—they can be completely different documents. If there’s a change to the assignment you have to remember to make edits everywhere you might have posted the information, or risk giving students conflicting information. Use one source document located in the course files of your LMS as the source of your assignment criteria, and link to it from news (or announcements, activity feed, et al), content, the assignment folder, discussions—anywhere you want that information to appear.

Make Video Viewing Consistent

Unless you enjoy answering panicky student emails at all hours, do not merely attach the file of your lecture video to your course and hope for the best. Some browsers will play the video; others won’t. And if students have to download the file for viewing, they may or may not have software that will play it. Most LMS platforms have a tool for video playback, and at minimum you should use it. But if your institution offers a streaming video service that allows you to embed video directly in your course, best practice would be to use it consistently. Video displays right in the course—no downloads or additional players needed. Which will make for a consistent viewing experience, and fewer pleas for help from your students.