We’ve been provided with a handy video tutorial for first-time instructors who would like a visual walkthrough of the software.
If you have issues using the software please contact OutlineSupport@uwaterloo.ca
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Notes Before Starting
You do not need to be on the VPN
You cannot upload existing PDFs/Word documents to the software (though you can copy/paste from them)The best browser to use is Google Chrome, Chromium, or Edge – Firefox has some issues rendering the buttons on the content editing tools
Students can’t see your outline until you hit publishYou’ll need to provide students with a link to https://!
Students see all published outlines for their registered courses on the outline.uwaterloo.ca, or a direct link to your course outline (once published) for them to access the document.
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homepage
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Please Note Until Quest has fully registered you as the instructor of a course, you won’t be able to attach those courses to your outline. It’s recommended that instructors wait for Quest to be populated with instructors before getting started with Outline. If you’re interested in starting early for the next term before Quest is fully populated, check out this FAQ item for some tips! |
The Instructor Dashboard
Upon logging in to https://outline.uwaterloo.ca, most instructors will see the following page:
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If you don’t see this page upon logging in, you might not be registering as an instructor! Check out the troubleshooting page for quick tips. |
The selected term to search for courses.
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You can
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quickly switch between terms here.
Search Bar.
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You can
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search for
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Course Search results. By default, this list will show one entry for each section you are registered as an instructor for in QUEST. Note that we can’t determine if you’re the instructor of a course until QUEST has that information!
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Outline Indicator. This shows if a given section already has an outline, and whether or not it has been published yet.
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Add to Outline Button. This is the important one! Click this to add a section to your outline. Once you’ve added all the necessary sections you can start editing
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Quick Links. If you need to add sections of a course that you’re not the instructor for (for instance, if section 002 is taught by someone else, but both will share an outline) these links will quickly search for all sections of a given course
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other sections and courses – however most instructors will see their courses automatically.
Unclaimed Sections. This will show any sections from Quest not yet added to a course outline.
By default it will load all courses taught by the current userDrafts. If Quest doesn’t have your course ready yet, you can still get started early by making a “Draft” document. You can see the drafts documentation for help if needed!
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If it’s your first time editing a course outline in the software and your course outline is for a single section, our recommendation is to give the software a shot without reading the guide, and pick the guide back up if you get stuck! |
Creating a Course Outline
To create a You can add all relevant sections to a single course outline, simply select the sections you wish to add to your document, and press the Create & Edit Now button.
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it works like a shopping cart. Simply select all the sections you’d like to add (in the order you want them to appear) and click Start Editing in the menu that pops up at the bottom of the page.
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If you’re planning on having someone else do the majority of the work in authoring the course outline, the Create & Authorize Let Someone Else Edit button will let you enter their username and immediately give that person the ability to edit the outline on your behalf. |
You should be taken immediately to the course outline editor, where the real fun begins!
Editing a Course Outline
Editing most course outlines should be a fairly straightforward ordeal. The software will provide users with a template that has several editable areas wherein editors can enter rich content with links, headers, tables, etc.
Before you start, take a look at the layout of the document and see which areas need to be filled out and which headers are hard-coded into the template.
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Remember to save frequently when editing your course outline! |
At the time of writing () the template is roughly as follows:
Title
Class Schedule (automatically populate from QUEST)
[Editable] Instructor / TA Information
[Editable] Course Description (includes calendar course description from QUEST)
[Formatted Table] Learning Outcomes
[Editable] Tentative Course Schedule
[Formatted Table + Editable] Texts / Materials
[Formatted Table + Editable] Student Assessment
[Editable (plaintext)] Assignment Screening
[Editable] Notice of Recording
[Editable] Administrative Policy
+ Some mandatory policy attached to the bottom
We don’t do this for you! |
Most editable chunks of the outline are rich text, but some of them come as formatted tables. There’s some little blurbs of help-text throughout the document to help recommend which content best fits where!.
Formatted Table Input
We require certain portions of the course outline to be input as tables. This has several benefits, but a very notable one is that it makes it possible to easily query the data in course outlines for analysis during program reviews.
In order to ensure all your information can be properly articulated, we have While the table columns can’t be modified, we’ve made it possible to have multiple tables (eg. for multiple marking schemes), as well as added a rich-text input box beneath the tabled sections for more information.
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Mandatory Text
Some text will automatically be added to your outline based on which courses are present in the course outline. At this time () the required text from the secretariat will be added, as well as any text your faculty or department has configured if they have done sodifferent grading schemes) and each table is accompanied by a rich text box to add context or details if necessary.
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Mandatory & Boilerplate Content
Some content will automatically be attached to your outline and not be editable. These will generally be found at the bottom of the course outline in the Policy sections. Examples of this are:
The required outline content as dictated by the University
Any departmental or faculty controlled mandatory content
You can’t alter mandatory text, but if there are multiple options relevant (for instance, with cross-listed courses) you can select which one is most relevant for your course.
In other places we provide faculties and departments the ability to create optional Boilerplate texts that you can quickly add to your outline. If any boilerplate is available for the current course, an Add Boilerplate button will appear on the rich-text editing tools.
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Once added, the blocks are just normal text, they won’t be automatically updated term-over-term! Please check the contents when copying content from previous terms! |
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For sections with many boilerplate options we provide a popup window which allows you to search for specific content.
Saving and Publishing your Course Outline
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Saving for the first time will also enable the Info/Settings page some of the settings for your course outline, where you can set additional editors and see some useful course information, such as a useful heatmap of when your students are in other coursesand lets you do stuff like granting edit access and changing which sections are attached to an outline.
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Save frequently during editing! We don’t have an auto-save feature at this time, and you can’t recover your work if your computer turns off! |
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Any subsequent changes / saves will be tracked in a revision history (visible to students can see all versions)
Once the term is over the outline will be permanently locked and no longer editable
Any logged-in UW user will be able to search for member can now find and view your course outline (not just your students!)
Any mandatory content (policy stuff) gets locked and will no longer automatically get updates. (You can log in and manually update them!
Upon publishing, if you’ve left anything blank that is required you’ll see a popup with that information, and need to fix any issues before continuing.
Once published you will be presented with a URL that you can share with your students, available on the Info/Settings page. See our sharing guide for help on how to get your students access to your course outlinesor they can simply log in to outline.uwaterloo.ca and see it on their homepage.
Adding / Removing
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Sections
If you’re working on a draft, or for some other reason didn’t add a necessary section to your course outline, you can do so by using the Courses / Sections Included tool at the top of the outline editing page. Using this tool you can quickly search through any courses you have access to and attach them to the current document.
Simply click the little gear and you’ll be able to search for other sections to add:
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By default, editors are able to add the following courses to their outlines:
Any section the editor is registered as an instructor for in QUEST
Any other section of a course which the editor is teaching at least one section of
For example, if the editor is teaching MATH1 section 001, they can also add MATH1 section 002 even if they aren’t teaching it. This is intended to make it simple for course coordinators to set up course outlines that span several sections
Any courses in a domain the editor is an administrator for (as configured in the outline administration tools)
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If you add a cross-listed section from a different faculty or department, the mandatory text at the bottom of your outline may get automatically updated! In some cases you may need to choose between multiple pieces of mandatory content to select the best option for your course.
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Likewise, the order of the courses may change the automatically generated outline title, and what order the course descriptions display. |
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If the section in question falls within the same faculty, reach out to your undergraduate office, likely an administrator can add the section for you
If you don’t have a local administrator or the course is in a different faculty, the best option is to add the other instructor as an editor for the outline (see Info/Settings page below) and have them add the section.
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Re-use Existing Course Outlines
One of the great benefits of the software is the ability to quickly import previous course outlines!
Using the Re-use Existing Outline tool at the top of the edit page, you can search for any published course outline, or any unpublished course outline for courses you previously taught. Once selected you can import this content to quickly get ready for the next term!
The tool will automatically find the 3 most recent course outlines for the same course – but you can click the gear to find more outlines to import.
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Certain data, like the class schedule, calendar description, and mandatory text will not get imported, as these things are automatically configured, but editable content will be pulled in.
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Course outlines fall under the Policy 76 73 (section 6b) as intellectual property of the University of Waterloo, so all instructors are able to freely re-use course outlines or formatting from existing documents within the software. |
Info/Settings Page
Once you’ve saved your course outline once, the Info/Settings page becomes available. Here you can see the current status of the course outline, who can edit it, as well as a very handy heatmap of when your students are busy in other classes.
On this page you will also find the URL to your outline (once published) and help for getting your published course outline into LEARN
Add Additional Editors
If you need other people to assist in editing a course outline, you can grant them permissions to do so here.
By default, only the person who created the course outline will have edit access to the document, so other registered instructors will need to be granted permission explicitly to grant them edit permissions.
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Granting Edit / View Access
By default whoever starts the course outline is the only person with edit access. Any other instructors listed on the sections will be able to view the in-progress outline, but not modify it.
You can grant more permissions using the Permissions block which is at the top of the edit page.
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Support
Hopefully this guide has provided enough depth for most instructors to get started publishing their course outlines.
If your faculty has adopted the software officially, you can reach out to your undergraduate office for any support requests, and can always contact the developer directly . You can also the support channel at OutlineSupport@uwaterloo.ca if you encounter any bugs or have suggestions.
Accessibility Support
If you find any part of the process unmanageable. We rely heavily on user feedback to identify issues with the software, so please reach out with any questions, comments, or issues you encounteroutline authoring process inaccessible, unusable, or even just really annoying please submit a request for accessibility support to OutlineSupport@uwaterloo.ca. For accessibility needs we can provide direct assistance entering content if something isn’t working well, and we’d like to ensure the authoring tools have comfortable controls for all of our users.