Overview

ATO supports MSU's learning management system (LMS) for joint projects between us and other organizations inside and outside MSU. 

For all courses we host in our non-credit instance of the LMS, there is a level of 'Basic Included Support.' This level of support should be sufficient for you as you set up and teach your course, provided that you are moderately active in learning about the LMS platform. 

We will provide this standard support at no additional cost beyond any written agreement we have with you. In cases where extra assistance is needed, we can provide additional services for an added cost.  

General Expectations

We partner with you to support and structure courses that reflect your expertise. You will be primarily responsible for creating and teaching these courses and reviewing their content to ensure that they meet learners' needs. (Since we cannot know your expectations, we cannot be responsible for final readiness approval.) 

You should have your course fully set up at least two weeks before it is scheduled to begin. Mid-course adjustments should be rare, and we cannot guarantee the speed at which we will resolve any issues that arise as a result of making changes to the course during the term.

In short:

  • You are responsible for creating content and instructing.
  • You should have your courses fully set up two weeks before they begin.
  • We can make only minor adjustments to the course once it begins.

Quality Standards

All courses must meet basic quality standards. Formatting must be consistent throughout, and text should be free from typos and grammatical errors. The resolution of any images used should be at least 72 dpi. 

Beginning two weeks before the start of your course, we will give your course a cursory quality review and may correct minor issues. If there are substantial issues, we will notify you that you must improve the quality level.  

Online Non-Credit Course Standards

Basic Included Support

Included in the cost of our written agreement, we shall:

  • Provide online resources explaining how to build and run your course in the LMS.
  • Provide basic tech support for students, including help logging in, accessing features and addressing other issues as they arise.
  • Debug and troubleshoot features that aren’t working as expected. (Note that this may take days or weeks, depending on the issue.)
  • Troubleshoot bugs with user experience.
  • Provide resources and answer brief questions to start creating and integrating content.
  • Answer brief ‘how to’ questions regarding using the learning management features. Note: Answers requiring more detailed explanations or walkthroughs may incur additional billing.
  • Create and award Credly badges when badging is part of the course agreement.
  • Provide basic internal badge support.
  • In automated courses, we providebasicassistance with automation.
  • Support general maintenance and annual updates for recurring classes (included in the $99 per year setup fee).

Note: If you still have questions or need clarification after watching the provided videos or other training materials, we are here to help! If the level of assistance required rises to a level beyond 'Basic Included Support,' we will let you know.

Additional Options

The following services are intended to give a general idea of what we can provide at an additional cost. 

We are always happy to work toward finding a solution that will meet your needs. The price and amount of time needed will depend on various factors. If you will need these services, let us know as early as possible so we can discuss the desired project and come up with a time and cost estimate.

  • Assistance troubleshooting advanced features you have set up on your own or debugging substantial problems resulting from your own errors.
  • Hands-on assistance to make a course more engaging and interactive.
  • Advanced training and walkthroughs.
  • Substantial content updates and structural changes during annual maintenance.
  • Large amounts of content migration, editing, formatting, etc.
  • Designing course flow and segmenting into modules.
  • Click-through full course testing
    • Generally, we expect you to do the final review, given that you provided the content expertise, and we cannot fully know whether what we are reviewing meets your expectations and standards. However, at an additional cost, we will do our best to review the course and its contents comprehensively.
  • Assistance designing a custom grade book
    • Note: Ultimately, grading is the instructor's responsibility, so although we can assist, we cannot take full responsibility.
  • Advanced automation of self-paced courses
  • Extensive quality control
    • We will contact you if there are substantial and persistent quality issues (formatting, spelling, grammarandimage or video quality), and you will be responsible for correcting the problems. If you do not address the issues within a reasonable time, we may bring them up to minimal quality standards and bill for our time.

Premium Course Development

If you have a basic idea and would like us to find a content expert and create a course from minimal input, we can arrange this for an additional cost. As this will likely require hiring external instructional designers with specialization in your area, the price will vary based on a range of factors. Contact us to have an exploratory conversation.