Guidance for Unit Leaders

The unit handbook does not have to be a single, written document.  It may be developed as Moodle pages, some of it could be audio or video, or animated, or some combination which you feel best reflects the unit and your style of teaching – though do think about how easy it will be for students to return to the key information they need. If you are producing a written document, then the PDF format is accessible and not accidentally editable.

The Moodle ‘book’ tool is quite useful for handbooks, as it will let you have an individual, linkable, page for each item, without cluttering up your Moodle page with a lot of different links for each part of the handbook.

Whilst there are no rules about what to include, there are some things not to include. Some information is automatically provided through Moodle and is best not included in the handbook, since that just makes another data source to alter if anything changes. These are:

• Coursework submission dates: are visible to the students in Moodle and change every year.

• Timetable: Students receive an up-to-date, personalised timetable through Moodle and through the MyMMU portal.

• Reading Lists: These are visible through the library reading list set up for your unit, which you can manage and update yourself – contact your subject librarian if you aren’t already registered for this. There is more information on the library website.

Contact details

Information about contacting all tutors, technicians and Student Experience Tutors/Programme Support tutors linked to the unit should be included here. You might want to include a bit of biographical detail and any information about when or where you are best contacted. For instance, if you are part-time, students need to know what days you won’t be able to answer the phone or reply to queries; you might want to indicate the usual turn-round time you can manage for replies to emails; you could highlight the existence of any Frequently Asked Questions pages you provide.

Unit learning outcomes

These should be copied across from the unit specification. You could also link these to other units on the programme, to show how students are expected to progress, particularly to levels which precede or follow your unit.

Assignment brief

This will normally be included in the unit handbook. 

In addition, you may have requirements about formative assessment: you may want to include in the handbook a summary of what you expect to be done, by when, and how this work will support student learning and progression towards the assignment.

The assignment brief should be reviewed by a colleague (verification) before distribution to students. This is to ensure that it makes sense and is consistent with others on the programme.

Expectations

You may have additional expectations for students. Some examples might be:

• to complete particular tasks by particular times
• to follow a protocol for seminar preparation
• to share ground rules about attendance and behaviour in classes
• to set up a work placement
• to sign up for external visits
• to attend sessions produced by external speakers
• to set up working groups in a particular way

These should be set out in the unit handbook. If there are general programme-level expectations which are in the programme handbook, you can just refer students back to this.

Teaching Schedule

How much you put about the teaching schedule in the handbook probably depends on the complexity and size of the unit: if there are a lot of groups running in parallel with complicated timetabling, it might be better to simply provide an overview in the handbook, and to point students to their individualised timetables for the full details.

There is no need to provide too much detail in the unit handbook – it will be easier to provide the information and to make changes only in the Moodle area for the unit, under the relevant week or topic. This makes it easier to be flexible and to respond to student needs: for instance, if you need to return to something which has been poorly understood, or if you go more quickly than expected on a particular topic, or if you find an interesting new resource you want to spend more time on.