Course Design

The terms Primary, Development, Live, and Archived describe different stages in a course’s lifecycle. Understanding these stages helps clarify how courses are created, delivered, and maintained within My Courses. The graphic below illustrates this lifecycle and how each phase connects to the next.

For additional information on these courses and what you can do if you are working with any of these types of courses, please see the tabs below the graphic. 

Primary courses are the blueprint of your course content that is used from semester to semester and is copied into new courses each term. Using primary courses allows a central place for course updates, helps curate a consistent experience for students, and allows departments to control the quality of the courses in their program. 

Maintaining your primary course is an important part of making sure that students have the best experience possible when they take the course. An up-to-date primary will ensure that the content is up-to-date, reduce errors and inconsistencies between semesters, and maintain compliance with accessibility and university standards. Maintaining the primary will also help the faculty teaching the courses by saving them time making individual updates, and help create clear expectations between the faculty and the students. 

When should I review or update my primary courses?

Primary courses should be updated between course copy dates. The Curriculum & Instruction Center will send out a course copy notice. This notice will include the date that the course will be copied for the upcoming term, along with the deadline for updates to be made to primary courses in order for the updates to be included in the copy. 

If there are updates or changes made in live sections during a term, they also need to be made in the primary course. If updates are only made in the live section and not reflected in the primary, they will not be brought over to the next term. 

What are some best practices for maintaining my primary course?

Since course content outlines the expectations between faculty and students, the primary course should be designed in a way that is clear and organized.

• Items that are in the course that are no longer being used should be removed or hidden from the student view
• All documents should be clearly labeled
• Check for accessibility for all of your course materials. D2L has integrated accessibility checking tools that you can use to make sure that your content is accessible for all students.
• Make sure your course is laid out in a way that communicates clearly to students about what they need to do throughout the duration of the course

If you have additional questions about maintaining your primary courses please reach out to the CIC team: CIC@csp.edu