Plan the Design and Structure

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DesignPLUS Workflow Plan the Design and Structure

Before creating any templates, you'll need to make some key decisions about the visual design, content, and organization of your course. The DesignPLUS tools can do a lot of amazing things, but they can't update all of your content if you change your mind late in the course development process. So start by giving serious thought to the questions below and take time to document your decisions. 

Document Your Decisions

Here's a Google document Links to an external site. you can copy to document the visual design, content, and organization decisions for your course. If you are not already logged in, you'll be prompted to log in to your Google account before accessing this document.

You may not know all the answers at the very beginning and that's okay. What you want to avoid is making changes to templates after you have started adding instructional content to module items in the course.

Questions to Ponder

  • Will you use the same theme for all theme elements (banner title, link grid, page headings), or do you want to mix and match themes?
  • Do you plan to modify any of the theme elements, or will you use themes as is out of the box?
  • What page heading level do you want to use for the title field in the banner title element? The default value is H2, but since DesignPLUS hides Canvas page titles (which use H1), you can use H1 if you prefer. This decision will determine the level to start with in the content area of the page.
  • How will you capitalize (e.g., title case, sentence case, lowercase) your page title and section headings? It's okay to use different capitalization for different heading levels as long as each level is treated consistently across all content. Also, try to avoid using all caps, as upper case text is difficult to read and may be misinterpreted by screen readers.
  • What DesignPLUS components, besides the banner title, should appear on all or most pages, and in what location? For example, you might want to include a module progress indicator at the top or bottom of every module item. Or, you may decide to add a custom copyright or creative commons notice as a standard footer.
  • Are there any other content, formatting, or page layout conventions that should be present in most or all of the pages and content items in the course?
  • Will any of the pages, assignments, discussion topics, or quizzes use a standard structure with identical headings and boilerplate text? If so, these are good candidates for specialized templates.
  • What will your module pattern for the Multi-Tool module builder look like? You'll need to create a template for each content type that will be included in the module pattern.