[ARCHIVED] Is anyone using the Blueprint Course functionality? I would love to hear about your experience.

[natalie_hamilto]

Hi. I am keen to hear from anyone who is using the Blueprint Course functionality  - the pros and cons, and about any pitfalls that I should be mindful of if our college adopts this approach.

So far I have quite mixed feedback about the functionality so would find it helpful to hear from and connect with anyone who has gone with this approach. Cheers

[kona]

 @natalie_hamilto , greetings! My go-to people in the Community for Blueprint courses are  @lindalee ‌ and  @kblack . They've both written a number of things about Blueprint courses in the Community and Linda has also presented a number of times on this topic as well.  

Here are a few blogs I found on this in the Community:

Tips for Designing and Maintaining Blueprint Courses 

Lessons Learned about Blueprint Courses: Getting Buy-In 

https://community.canvaslms.com/community/instcon/instructurecon-2018/blog/2018/07/31/lessons-learne... 

Hope this helps!

Kona

[lindalee]

HI Natalie,

We've been using Blueprint since it was released in 2017 - we're about to start our third year with it. We use it in a variety of use cases -- some of which are discussed in the blog posts that Kona linked to above. It definitely has some warts, and I have a wish list of improvements. But for the situations where we use it, it's critical to our workflow. However, we have had to plan for some of those warts I mentioned.

I'm happy to share more. How are you thinking about using Blueprint? Rather than overload you with info, I'm happy to share the issues you might face based on how you are thinking about using it.

Best,

Linda

[kbink]

Hi Natalie,

I have two general biology lab courses that use blueprints, kinda.  I call them mixed source courses.  Basically the  lab content of the course is delivered to modules by a blueprint, and the lecture content of the course is delivered from a home page with links to weekly or lecture-based pages.  It ends up being kinda complex but it works for us because there are about 6 faculty that rotate through the course as lecturers, and the lab content is run by a lab coordinator and is the same for all of them.  In the past, before Canvas, we used to have a lecture site and a lab site, which meant lecture and lab grades would have to be manually combined to get the final grades.  Now we have both in the same site, but we have to carefully import the courses to new semester sites.  We copy only the lecture content and leave behind the lab content.  Then we disassociate the lab blueprint course from the old semester and associate it with the new semester course sites to get the lab content into the course.  We make sure all lab content, whether files, quizzes, assignments, pages, is very well labeled so it is easy to leave behind when we select content to import.

So now all the grades are in one site, so students have accurate in progress grades.  The lab content and grading is identical for every course, regardless of which instructor, and any updates to lab content can be easily pushed to multiple lecture sections.

So even in a complex situation, it has been helpful.

Kalli