Item description visible to students and staff:
“Welcome to your module. In here you will find important information about your module, including the module guide, contact details for your lecturers, the module reading list, and more information about the help and support available to UON students.”

Required
The 'About this module' item should remain as the first item in the course content area of the course. The item name, 'About this module', and item description should not be deleted or modified.

The ‘About this module’ section should contain the following items:

• a written and/or video welcome to the module;
• the module guide;
• details of how to contact staff teaching on the module;
• the reading list for the module (the reading list link for the module is automatically added to NILE courses and automatically links to the correct reading list);
• Help and support for UON students (from 25/26 onward this guide is automatically added to NILE courses and is updated and maintained centrally. The guide should not be deleted or made unavailable to students.).

Recommended
Staff may like to include a ‘Module FAQs’ discussion. By encouraging students to post general or frequently asked questions, staff may be able to avoid the use of email to answer the same questions multiple times. Alternatively, staff may like to include a pre-written list of module FAQs.

To note
The reading list link and help and support for UON students guide are only added to module-level NILE courses delivered by UON and do not appear in NILE courses delivered by partners. Additionally, the item description for NILE courses delivered by partners is slightly different and reads as follows: "Welcome to your module. In here you will find important information about your module, including the module guide, contact details for your lecturers, and the module reading list."

Item description visible to students and staff:
“In here you will find the submission points for your module assessments, along with information related to the assessments for this module (e.g., assessment briefs, submission instructions, and deadlines).”

Required
The 'Assessment and submission' item should remain as the second item in the course content area of the course. The item name, 'Assessment and submission', and item description should not be deleted or modified.

The ‘Assessment and submission’ section should contain the following items:

• assessment brief(s), including information on acceptable file formats for submission, word count (or equivalent), assessment weighting, and which learning outcomes are being assessed;
• assessment submission and feedback dates, including re-sit dates;
• assessment arrangements for students with additional needs;
• assessment criteria, including a copy of, or link to, any assessment rubric (or similar) being used;
• any assessment-specific materials;
• guidance about the process by which the assessment item(s) should be submitted;
• the assessment submission point(s).

Additionally, the following items are provided by default:

• Submission and feedback guidance (from 25/26 onward this guidance document is automatically added to NILE courses and is updated and maintained centrally. The document should not be deleted or made unavailable to students).
• Assignment submission guide (this link takes students to the Learning Technology Team's assignment submission guide).

Recommended
Staff may like to add a video introduction to assessments in addition to the formal assessment brief. Staff may also like to set up an assessment FAQs discussion, or may prefer to include a pre-written list of assessment FAQs. Staff may like to make use of sub-folders where there are multiple assessment items.

Item description visible to staff:
“This folder contains information for staff and external examiners about the grading, feedback and verification processes carried out for this module’s assessments. This folder and all items within it must always remain hidden from students.”

Required
The 'Grading, feedback, and verification' item should remain as the third item in the course content area of the course, and must always remain hidden from students. The item name, 'Grading, feedback, and verification', and item description should not be deleted or modified.

Staff should use this area of their Ultra course to store materials relating to the grading, feedback and verification process, including internal moderation records, and any materials for the External Examiner.

GDPR information to note
This area is hidden from students and must always remain so, as should all items stored within this area. Should items stored in this area of the module be made available to students, it may constitute a data breach and will need to be reported to the University’s Data Protection Office for further investigation.

Required
The teaching and learning content and activities should be placed in the course content area of the Ultra course, after the ‘About this module’, ‘Assessment and submission’, and the (hidden from students) ‘Grading, feedback and verification’ areas.

Use of top-level learning modules and folders (structured, for example, week-by-week or thematically) will be necessary to create a logical layout for students to be able to find materials, as this will be the area where students will spend most of their time.

Recommended
Use of learning modules is recommended for top-level course content items. Rather than displaying all course content at once, staff may like to use release conditions to automatically release course content. Alternatively, staff may prefer to manually hide course content at the start of the module, and release content each week.

Item description visible to students and staff:
“Welcome to your programme. In here you will find important information about your programme, including contact details for your programme leader.”

Required
The 'My programme' item should remain as the first item in the course content area of the course. The item name, 'My programme', and item description should not be deleted or modified.

The ‘My programme’ section should contain the following items as appropriate:

• a written and/or video welcome to the programme;
• the programme guide;
• details of how to contact key programme staff.
• Help and support for UON students (from 25/26 onward this guide is automatically added to NILE courses and is updated and maintained centrally. The guide should not be deleted or made unavailable to students.).

Recommended
Staff may like to promote the MyEngagement tool to students in their programme-level NILE course, so that students can find out who their personal tutor is, and can track their engagement with their studies. 
As the programme-level NILE course contains all students on all years of the programme, staff may like to make use of the groups tool to organise their programme-level NILE course (e.g., by creating groups for first, second, and third year students). While annoucements will be sent to all students, use of groups can allow messages to be sent to just one group of students, and can allow content items in the NILE course to be made available to specific groups, rather than to all students.
Staff may also like to include a ‘Programme FAQs’ discussion. By encouraging students to post general or frequently asked questions, staff may be able to avoid the use of email to answer the same questions multiple times. Alternatively, staff may like to include a pre-written list of programme FAQs.

Item description visible to students and staff:
"In here you will find information about who your course reps are and how to contact them. Also included here may be minutes of meetings and other information from or about your course reps."

Required
The My course reps' item should remain as the second item in the course content area of the course. The item name, 'My course reps', and item description should not be deleted or modified.

The ‘My course reps’ section should contain the following items as appropriate:

• information for students about who their course reps are and how to contact them;
• minutes of Student Voice meetings.

Required
Other information, content and activities relating to the programme can be placed in the course content area of the Ultra course, after the ‘My programme’ and 'My course reps' items.

Use of top-level learning modules and folders will be necessary to create a logical layout for students to be able to find materials.

Recommended
Use of learning modules is recommended for top-level course content items. Rather than displaying all course content at once, staff may like to use release conditions to automatically release course content. Alternatively, staff may prefer to manually hide course content at the start of the module, and release content each week.

Visible to staff only. Staff can use this tool to set the course availability. By default, courses are closed (i.e., they can be seen by students under 'Courses' in the main NILE menu, but can not be accessed by students). Courses should be set to ‘open’ prior to teaching so students can access them. Once finished, staff may set the course to ‘completed’, which allows students to access the course content but not participate (e.g., contribute to discussion board and journals) in the course.

More information about how to make NILE courses available to students is available from: Learning Technology Team - How do I make my NILE course available to my students?

Staff can use Class Collaborate to set up, run, and manage synchronous online classroom sessions, meetings, tutorials, etc. Students use this tool to join these sessions, and access session recordings.

Recommended
Where Collaborate is used, in advance of their first session it is useful to provide students with clear instructions about how to find the session, and the need to access Collaborate via an up-to-date browser with a good Internet connection. At the start of their first session, it is worthwhile spending time with students explaining the functionality of Collaborate, including how to participate in the chat, draw on whiteboards, take part in polls, etc.

Staff using a virtual classroom for the first time are advised to meet with their learning technologist, to find out how to use and get the best from virtual classrooms.

Staff can use this tool to add content from external sources, such as licenced/purchased ebooks from publishers. This section of the course also contains the 'Send Marks to SITS' tool.

Visible to staff only. Staff can use this tool to see how their course will look and function to students.

Recommended
Use of Student Preview to check through courses is highly recommended, especially where course content has been set up with complex release conditions.

Required
Materials must be created with accessibility in mind. For example, Word documents must be formatted using styles and headers to ensure compatibility with screen readers and easy conversion to PDF. Tutors must ensure that all content being used is accessible in all countries where students are based.

Staff should use the Ally report tool in their sites to identify any content which is not accessible and then resolve this prior to release to students.