How to complete your module content

1. General tips

• Don't refer to students in the third person (for example, 'This week the students will...'). Always address them as 'you' or 'we' (for example, 'This week you will discuss...' or 'We will examine...').
• Always explain jargon or acronyms that students might not be familiar with.
• Try to avoid using language that is too figurative or that relies too much on idiom – students might struggle to understand your meaning if English is not their first language, even if you think it's a common enough phrase!
• Avoid extensive use of italics or bold for emphasis.
• Always include full citations for sources and quotes. 

2. Titles

Remember to include titles for all lessons, weeks, readings, lectures and activities in your module. These should be more than just 'Lesson 1' or 'Reading' or the title of the book/article. Ideally, the titles should be descriptive and inform students. 

3. Readings

The online library will provide further guidance about how to select your readings. For each reading, you will need to provide an introduction; this might include, for example, the reading's relevance to the topic, particular ideas that you want the students to focus on or think about while they read, or a summary of the author's importance in the field.  

Remember that:

• Readings can come from a combination of chapters and articles.
• Reading times are estimated at five minutes per page.
• If YouTube videos are used in activities, please provide a text alternative. Each student must be able to perform the activity based on either the reading or the YouTube link. 
• Due to licensing restrictions, we are unable to include Harvard Business Review articles. 

Examples

The following are examples of readings with their introductions from an MSc Criminology module, 'Psychological and social causes of crime and offending'.

4. Introductions and summaries

For each week, you will need to write an introduction and a summary. These should contextualise the content and make it clear what the students will be learning / will have learned.

5. Quizzes

A quiz can also be included at the end of the topic as a revision point for students. Each quiz consists of 10 standard short answer, MCQs, True-False, MRQs, FIBs and/or Select type questions – all need to include a marked answer and feedback. Feedback can include referring students back to relevant sections in the essential reading or course pages. These questions should relate to what students have just read (or watched).

6. Long-answer questions

You could also include more detailed, long-answer questions. In order to make this worthwhile for students, supply a model answer or some guidance on answering the question so that students can compare their answer with that and judge how well they did. These model answers will be hidden from the students until they choose to read them. Students may need to do the reading again in order to understand the answer provided – please supply cross-references. 

7. Links

Where possible, we suggest directing students to complete their own searches, rather than giving them direct links. You can give them prompt words, or the name of the website in order to give students clear instructions to find the material they need. This also encourages them to become independent learners – after all, this is what they would need to do outside of the module.

Please supply all links to your editor in full and check that they work.

8. Images

If you want to use images in any of your content, we have to make sure that their licenses allows this. Contrary to popular belief, images from a Google Image search still retain copyright and so you cannot reuse them unless you have permission or the owner has specifically waived copyright. 

The following image banks are copyright-free, so you can use the images how you want: 

• Unsplash
• Pexels
• Pixabay
• Noun Project (for icons; please note these require attribution where the previous ones do not)
• Wikimedia Commons (often require attribution)

We also have access to paid-for stock images and stock footage from Storyblocks, which you can browse for suggestions to discuss with your video editor if you can't find something you want among the free image banks.