View by Topics vs View by Assignments

Learnvia courseware aims to simplify tasks for students. Instructors can configure modules into chapters that match a course's syllabus, typically with each chapter representing one week. 

By default, the chapters' modules are viewed by topics, just like a normal textbook's table of contents. Below are chapters already configured per week: 

...

and below are a couple of those chapters showing their modules, each module covering a key topic: 

Each module contains several tasks, each requiring about 10-15 min: 

Note that a module's "homework" task appears in the module after the module's "lesson" tasks. 

Traditional courseware allows instructors to create assignments from any combination of exercises, drawn from any chapter. This can create a seemingly random set of assignments with no obvious pattern for students. 

Instead, Learnvia courseware simplifies matters by having instructors specify weekly due dates for each task type in each chapter, assuming each chapter is a week. Clicking "View by Assignments" provides a view of each chapter divided by task type and due dates: 

Above, the third chapter, named "Week 3: Intro...", has all its lesson tasks due Tue Sep 9, and all its homework tasks due Thu Sep 11. Students can select View by Assignments, and then work through the next due tasks for that week. 

If instructors configure the courseware so each chapter is a week, they can automatically create a recurring pattern of assignments for students so every week is the same; just a few clicks yields perhaps 30 assignments (akin to calendar's "recurrent event" feature). Ex: Every week, the current chapter's lessons are due Tue, homeworks due Thu. Notes: 

• Instructors can change any week's individual due dates, to account for holidays, exams, etc. 
• Instructors can split a week's lesson activities into two due dates in a given week. Likewise for homeworks. (Both coming soon). 
• Quizzes are not shown but the same ideas apply. 
• Instructors do not HAVE to follow the one chapter per week model. They can group modules into chapters, then set due dates for each chapter's tasks as desired. 

Why two views? 

• The Topics view allows seeing the module concepts being learned in their natural hierarchy
• The Assignments view allows students to focus on the next assignment without having to search around

An important design choice was to keep each module's homework task within their module, rather than automatically collecting all homework questions to appear at the end of a chapter. As such, if a student is working on homework task 3.1.6, and they want to review the related lessons, they merely need scroll up in the module (3.1). Below, those lessons are shown collapsed, but they are easily expanded. This approach allows quick access to foundational knowledge, versus having to jump out to other content as is typical in traditional courseware (e.g., homework system jumping out to textbook content) -- such jumping either causes loss of focus, or simply isn't done.

In short, rather than a "fixed" table of contents and then a syllabus and assignments that jump around that content, Learnvia's digital nature allows instructors to first configure the content to match their syllabus, and thus the content matches their syllabus, and assignments consist of the tasks in that week's content. Students have indicated a strong preference towards such a straightforward pattern, making a course's requirements clearer, reducing anxiety, allowing planning, and reducing missed deadlines.