Getting Started with Outline.uwaterloo.ca

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

Table of Contents

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)

• Students can’t see your outline until you hit publish!

• Students see all published outlines for their registered courses on the outline.uwaterloo.ca homepage

The Instructor Dashboard

Upon logging in to https://outline.uwaterloo.ca, most instructors will see the following page:

Open

1. The selected term to search for courses. You can quickly switch between terms here.

2. Search Bar. You can search for other sections and courses – however most instructors will see their courses automatically.

3. 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 user

4. Drafts. 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!

Creating a Course Outline

You can add all relevant sections to a single course outline, 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.

Open

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.

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.

While the table columns can’t be modified, we’ve made it possible to have multiple tables (eg. for different grading schemes) and each table is accompanied by a rich text box to add context or details if necessary.

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.

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

It is recommended that you save your course outline soon after you create it! Saving the course outline the first time commits it to the database, and ensures you can come back and edit it later.

Saving for the first time will also enable some of the settings for your outline, and lets you do stuff like granting edit access and changing which sections are attached to an outline.

You can save as often as you want and won’t get any errors for missing content until you decide to Publish.

Publishing

Publishing your course outline is one of the final steps! When you’re confident that you have the majority of the required course outline filled out and are ready to share it with your students, hit the Publish button instead of the normal save button. Read the warning that comes up before continuing as there are some special things that happen to published course outlines!

• Any subsequent changes / saves will be tracked in a revision history (students can see all versions)

• Once the term is over the outline will be permanently locked and no longer editable

• Any logged-in UW member can now find and view your course outline

• 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, or they can simply log in to outline.uwaterloo.ca and see it on their homepage.

Adding / Removing 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 Sections 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:

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

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.

Adding Sections You Don’t Have Permissions For

If you need to add a section you do not have permissions for to a course outline, you have a couple options.

• 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.

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.

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.

We hope this functionality is able to help first-time instructors get their bearings by having easy access to previously published course outlines!

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.

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. 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 outline 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.