Arts and Humanities:
KEATS Course DesignBest Practices
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0
International License.
Dan Barrington
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Table of Contents
Course Structure and Style ..................................................................................................................... 3
Course Communication........................................................................................................................... 5
Learning resources and activities............................................................................................................ 7
Interactive Activities ........................................................................................................................... 8
Assessment and Feedback .................................................................................................................... 10
Parts of this work, "Arts and Humanities: KEATS Course Design- Best Practices", are a derivative of
"Use of KEATS to support your ongoing student experience and student engagement initiatives" by
CTEL King's College London, remixed under CC.
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Course Structure and Style
Having a clear and organised structure in KEATS is a useful first step. Although numerous possibilities
exist seek to create a KEATS organisational structure that is self-evident to the user. Try to ensure the
cognitive demand placed on the student (when using KEATS) is in relation to their learning and not
related to understanding an unnecessarily complex navigational structure.
Add a short welcome message to the start of your KEATS course. The welcome might offer some
inspirational thoughts about the importance of the module, as well as some general module
organisational details and introductions. Use short sentences; this gets the message across much
better from a general usability point of view.
Break text into paragraphs as large blocks of text are difficult to read. Write you welcome message in
a font which is clearly readable and has clear spacing between the letters. Fonts such as Verdana
and Arial allow for maximum readability if selected in point size 12 and above. If you decide to
change the colour of the text you write in remember to choose a good contrast between font colour
and background. For preference, black on an off-white / pale yellow background or dark blue on a
pale blue background work well.
An image of the course convenor helps to personal the welcome message. Large images are slow to
load and can take up too much screen real estate, especially when a course is viewed on a mobile
device.
Ensure that each topic has some resources and or activities. Empty topics convey little motivation nor
benefit to the student and should be deleted. This will also reduce the amount of page scroll on a
course page. Include a meaningful title to each course topic so that students know what to expect
from each week and make referencing the material on your course much easier for revision.
The school does not impose a uniform structure to any KEATS course, with the one exception of that
all summative assessment material be placed in an specific topic called module documentation and
assessment. This section should appear as the first topic on the course page. The content contained
in the topic has been based around the College Phase 1 TEL benchmark Statement and should include
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links to information such as; School referencing guidelines, module description and assessment
details.
Students prefer familiarity and uniformity in course pages. A uniform School structure helps to reduce
the time it takes for students and staff to acclimatise to any new course pages and will give, by
definition, a consistent look-and-feel.
Topics
Course Introduction
Text & Images
Topic titles should be meaningful
Regularly review introductory text
ensuring that the information is still
correct
Avoid italics, underlined text and
small fonts
Avoid using sequential titles like
week 1 and week 2
Check that hyperlinks work
Use sentence case text
Create a topic for called module
documentation and assessment
Break text into paragraphs
Choose a font which is clearly
readable
Remove empty topics
Choose a good contrast between
font colour
Use images edited for the Web
Add alternative text to all images
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Course Communication Strategy
With the best intentions and planning, changes to modules and lectures still happen. To minimise the
effect of these changes on students, effective, prompt and reliable communication strategies are
necessary. Set out to your students your module communication strategies, include up to date contact
details on your course page. List who will take responsibility for advising students of any changes and
who and how the messages will be sent.
By default the News Forum, a unique forum that acts as an announcements tool for your KEATS
appears top section of your course homepage and is related to the Latest News block. By default, only
course ‘teachers’ can post to the News Forum. KEATS will send notification emails to inform users of
particular activities such as a new post on the News forum.
The Quickmail block, an additional block that can be added to any KEATS course, allows course
convenors to send emails to course members directly from KEATS. This can be a convenient alternative
to setting up a module email list. It is also possible for course teachers to send emails to course
members through the Participants screen, accessed via the Settings block.
The Upcoming Events and Calendar blocks help you and your students to keep track of due dates and
other important events in your course. When you add an activity with a due date to a KEATS course,
the due date it is automatically added to the course calendar. The Upcoming Events blocks lists events
approaching on the calendar.
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Contact details
Course Blocks
Display all contact details including
department email address
Add the Quickmail block to the course
Include contact details for all staff who will
be teaching on the module including GTAs
Add the Upcoming events block to the
course
Add the Calendar block to the course
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Resources and Activities
When used thoughtfully KEATS can be a useful part of a broader student engagement with your course
and help to enhance the student experience. KEATS can promote teaching and learning by adopting a
blended approach to content delivery.
Enhance the quality of the time-limited face to face interactions by presenting information and
engaging students prior to (and/or after) the face-to-face interactions. Typically in KEATS students are
engaged either with resources or activities. Resources can be considered as static components
whereas activities are those which require interaction.
A variety of popular file formats are supported in KEATS. Files added to the course page are
represented by an icon for that file type. It is good practice to provide all resources with appropriate
titles. If the meaning of the file is not transparent by its title include an informative description of
what you expect the learner to do with the resource.
Video and audio can be embedded directly into a course page allowing students to stay within the
KEATS course and not navigate to a third party website. The most common practice of this is use in
the School is an embedded YouTube clip. Ensure to make regular checks that the links are still
working. Many websites change content on a regular basis resulting in broken links.
To access module reading lists on KEATS, all courses should add the Resource Lists block. The block
links to the online reading list system Talis Aspire. If resources have been submitted to the library
they will appear in the block.
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Interactive Activities
A range of student interactions can be incorporated into your course page; these may include
interactions delivering (or assessing) background concepts and uncomplicated issues as well as those
that explore more complex ideas and pluralistic challenges. Typically in KEATS students are engaged
either with resources or activities.
Include self-assessment quizzes throughout the course that allows students to practice their newly
acquired knowledge in a stress-free environment and help to reinforce concepts learnt by providing
real-time feedback. The results can be reviewed by the course teacher who in turn can provide
additional material to rectify any misunderstandings by the class.
The choice feature can be added as an online poll, questions posed require forced answers that are
automatically collated, which offers a numerical and graphical output. This tool can assess students’
knowledge and ideas before and/or after sessions, can be used in selecting optional session topics or
be used as a research tool.
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Resources
Activites
Make regular checks that the links are still
working
Engage the students with interactive quizzes,
discussion forums or choice exercises
Provide all resources with appropriate titles
Include an informative description to learning
activities
Add the Resource Lists block
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Assessment and Feedback
The School of Arts & Humanities runs a compulsory policy for submission of summative assignments
and grading that it should all be done electronically through a combination of KEATS and Turnitin.
All summative submission activates should be placed in the module documentation and assessment
topic at the start of the course page.
Create new Turnitin submission areas for each module and set the release dates to the appropriate
dates and times. Assign all course teaching staff to the Turnitin activity, via the settings page, as
Turnitin tutors. Appropriately name the Turnitin resource and include a description.
Add appropriate resources relating to the assessment process that will be of value to students to the
module documentation and assessment topic. Additional resources can include, an assignment
briefing sheet, the School/College assessment criteria, marking arrangements used for various
assessment activates, a marking rubric.
Whenever using anonymous marking include the Schools standard notice reminding students to
enter their candidate number in the submission title filed and include a cover sheet on the front of
the submission.
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Formative assessment in the form of interactive quizzes, forum questions or choice activates should
be placed in the topic that they relate to as shown in the previous chapter. Remember to appropriately
title and include a description as to what is expected from the student when appropriate.
Summative assessment
Create a topic for called module
documentation and assessment
Formative/Self-assessment
Engage the students with interactive
quizzes, discussion forums or choice
exercises
Provide all assessment areas with
appropriate titles
Include the candidate number reminder
Include an informative description to
assessment activities
Include appropriate resources relating to
the assessment process
Make regular checks that the links are still
working
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