Best practice: Structuring your course

As described in the structure document, a space (in particular, a course) consists of multiple instances. As a space administrator of your course, you have complete control over how many instances your space might have and which students may access what instance.

Suggested layout

In the suggested standard layout:

• All instructors (professors and teaching assistants alike) control the teaching material in the master instance. In terms of roles:

  • The professor and designated teaching assistants have space admin role in the space and they edit material in the master instance.

• Every student is invited to their own instance, each student having the following roles:

  • Editor role in their own personal instance.

  • Viewer role on the distributed instance (this is given by definition).

• Group work is kept in a separate space, any specialized instances are not kept together with the standard layout.

Alternate layout

There are many alternate layouts possible as lined out previously. A particular example that has come up in a few cases:

• Some or all instructors work in separate instances.

  • The professor and designated teaching assistants have space admin role but agree to do course material development work in separate instances.

• Every student is invited to their own instance, each student having the following roles:

  • Editor role in their own personal instance.

  • Viewer role on the distributed instance (this is given by definition).

The benefit of this layout is that the master instance never has file editing collisions.

Distributions are complicated in this setup due to the fact that instructors may override each other's work during distribution. There is additional coordination required such that inadvertent overrides do not confuse instructors working in parallel.