Overview

ATO supports the learning management system, Brightspace, for joint projects between us and other organizations, both inside an outside MSU. 

For all courses that we host (in our non-credit instance of Brightspace), 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 Brightspace platform. 

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

General Expectations

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

Your course should be fully set up at least two weeks before it is scheduled to begin.  Mid-course adjustments should be rare, and we cannot make any guarantees about the speed at which we will be able to 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
  • Courses should be fully set up two weeks before it is scheduled to begin
  • Only minor adjustments should be made to the course once it begins

Quality Standards

All courses must meet basic quality standards. Formatting must be relatively consistent throughout, and text should be as free as possible 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 the quality level must be improved.   

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 D2L.
  • 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 get started on creating and integrating content.
  • Answer brief ‘how to’ questions, including questions regarding the utilization of learning management features. Note: Answers requiring more detailed explanations or walkthroughs may result in additional billing.
  • Create and award Credly badges when badging is part of the course agreement.
  • Provide basic internal badge support.
  • In automated courses, provide basic assistance with setting up automation.
  • Support general maintenance and annual updates for recurring classes (included in the $99 per year setup fee).

Note: If you still have a question or need clarification after watching provided videos or other training materials, we are here to help!  If the level of assistance needed 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 a wide range of factors.  If these services will be requested, let us know as early in the process as possible, so that we can have a discussion about the desired project and come up with a time and cost estimate.

  • Assistance troubleshooting advanced features that you have set up on your own or debugging substantial problems that have resulted 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 that you will do the final review, given that you are providing the content expertise and that 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 do a comprehensive review of the course and its contents.
  • Assistance designing a custom grade book
    • Note: Ultimately, grading is the responsibility of the instructor, so although we can assist with this, we cannot take full responsibility.
  • Advanced automation of self-paced courses
  • Extensive quality control
    • If there are substantial and persistent quality issues (formatting, spelling, grammar, and image or video quality), we will notify you that they need to be corrected. If they are not addressed within a reasonable amount of time after we notify you, we may opt to bring them up to minimal quality standards and bill for our time.

Premium Course Development

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