Table of Contents
Handy Links and Tips
Coursetune application |
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Help Articles |
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Interactive tutorials |
https://coursetune.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/categories/1500000453842-Interactive-Tutorials |
Coursetune education videos |
https://coursetune.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/sections/4409708477719-Coursetune-Training-Videos |
Case Studies |
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New Feature Reviews |
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K-12 Implementation Tips
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Implementation Stages
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Stage 1- Preparing Stage 2- Learning Stage 3- Growing Stage 4- Integrating Stage 5- Innovating |
Admin FAQ
As an Admin in Coursetune, you’ll get asked many of the same questions as people begin working in the application. Here are the most frequently asked questions and how to answer them.
- What is Coursetune?--> Coursetune is a collaborative online tool for prototyping, designing, mapping, and aligning curriculum at multiple levels. It’s built for teams to have all their curriculum goals, outcomes, and assessments in one place. Coursetune has a patented visual design that enables seeing courses in new ways for continuous improvement.
- Why are we using Coursetune?
- What is the goal of this project or initiative, and where does this software fit into that project?
- What is the scope of work that I will be expected to complete in Coursetune?
- Is there a deadline for this work?
- Which colleagues will I be working/collaborating with?
- What support, guidance, or training will be provided for my work:
From colleagues on campus?
From Coursetune support?
- Which of my other responsibilities will this software support?
- How will this make my job easier?
- What technology am I using right now that Coursetune will replace?--> Spreadsheets and documents are the most common tools that Coursetune replaces. Instead of binders that sit on a shelf, Coursetune is a dynamic presentation of the curriculum.
- Is this software intended to replace or add to a process or technology that I am already using?
Stage 1- Preparing
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"Coursetune is as straightforward and as hands-on as anyone that we've worked with. I thought you all would be more on the technical side, like how to do technical training, but you've also been good at teaching us how to think about how to write a map. That's been helpful. We feel like we are your only client, which is kind of cool." David Long, Assistant Head of School for Academics, The Galloway School |
What to communicate to your team: “We are starting an alignment journey by documenting our goals, strategizing for success, and aligning our projects and people.”
What you’ll be doing:
- Getting setup and adding your first users.
- Creating goals and plans for your project in Coursetune.
Technology setup
The first step to getting up and running with Coursetune is ensuring you have the right technology and access. Coursetune does NOT work for mobile devices and may be very challenging for small touchscreen devices.
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Browser |
Preferred: Chrome, Secondary: Firefox |
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Computer type |
Minimum processor type: Intel i3 or AMD Ryzen 3 Minimum memory: 8GB Any desktop or laptop with a mouse |
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Access |
Internet access required |
Help articles:
Preparing for your first import
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Set clear expectations with your team |
Get everyone excited about what they’ll see after their import with this video of a course “unboxing”. Share this article: Coursetune takes data loading out of your hands to communicate what to expect. |
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Gather files, mark them up, and send them to support@coursetune.com |
Help articles: |
Stage 2- Learning
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“I think Coursetune helped us join hands because we had been talking about curriculum and how to align programs, but not until we found Coursetune did it really give us a common goal to work towards. It's been great.” Lauren Travis, Dean of Instruction, Oaks Christian Online |
What to communicate to your team: “We will build familiarity with the tools and understand how the features will help us meet our goals.”
What you’ll be doing:
- Learning about Coursetune.
- Supporting and training your team.
- Getting your structure and naming customized.
Admin-only rights
You have ULTIMATE POWER, so we want you to know where you will be asked to do things no one else can.
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Here’s the list of tasks that ONLY Admins can do: |
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Customizing Coursetune
Coursetune works best when it feels familiar. Make it your own space. You’ll want to customize the names of levels and layers for your particular culture. You can give these Individual courses a structure to work within if you define these characteristics with your team in mind.
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Start here with a glossary guide to learn how to talk the talk of tuning. |
Here is a list of all the glossary articles that define the vocabulary of Coursetune |
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Name the levels |
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Set your defaults |
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Share this customer story with your team about scaling and innovative uses of Coursetune from the University of Missouri System. |
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Building your folder structure
There are a few general steps to follow to set up your folder structure using the levels of Coursetune. This structure informs how you report on the data you create. Consider what types of information you’ll need at each level. You can make a variety of folders without having to duplicate the effort of making the same course in each by using shared courses. Here’s a link to the Guide for Shared Curriculum.
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Build your folder structure level by level |
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Level 1 is the highest level of your folder structure. It is typically your school or district. |
Check that the name of your Level 1 is correct. If not, use this: How do I customize the level names in Coursetune? |
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Level 2 is the secondary structure of folders. You’ll typically use this level for departments, programs, or grade levels. |
Name your level-2 folders: To create: Changing settings: |
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Level 3 is the third set of folders that hold a collection of courses. Each folder lives in a level 2 folder. These typically are used for grade levels or disciplines. See notes below on questions to consider. |
Name your level-3 folders: To create: |
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Level 4 is the final structural level that provides the foundation for Coursetune, the course. These are not folders. They are individual course graphs. |
Your course will be created during the document importation part of your implementation. You do NOT need to create courses that are part of your import documents. |
Questions to consider for structuring your folders:
- Do you want to order your courses by course ID (default) or alphabetically by the course name?
- Do you want to display the course ID (default) or turn it off?
- Do you want to assign a default bundle name for the program? If you’ve organized all the courses by a standard unit like weeks, units, or modules, then the answer is probably yes.
Don’t know the answers to those yet? That’s OK--you can edit the program settings anytime.
Stage 3- Growing
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“I think the amount of support from your team and the program itself has just been way more than we anticipated. It has made it so much easier for us.” Lexi Fields, Director of Teaching and Learning, The Galloway School |
What to communicate to your team: “It’s time to add users to our team with specific roles and responsibilities. We can make sure we are all on the same page and working together on the same vision in Coursetune.”
What you’ll be doing:
- Strategizing for new user onboarding and the scope of work
- Defining outcome mapping strategy for alignment
- Conducting a review for gaps in the data
Two steps- adding users and assigning roles to them
Admins will manage their team by adding, deactivating, and reactivating team members.
You can add users one at a time, or you can add a bunch of users all at once. When you add a new user, they will receive an email from Coursetune inviting them to create a password and log in for the first time. Read: What is the new user account acceptance workflow like?
After adding a user, you must assign each user to a role in the Coursetune application. If you skip this step, users will log in and see nothing. In Coursetune, the user’s team role and goals define their status as viewers, commenters, editors, or managers.
It might be good to start with assigning managers and editors to the Level 3 folders. Typically, Level 3 might have one manager and one or two editors. We recommend keeping editing rights to a minimum to preserve the data. All roles play a part, and it is up to admins and managers to delegate proper workflow.
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Work together in Coursetune. |
Here is a list of articles about setting up your team. |
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Add a new single user. |
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Add multiple users. |
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Assign roles to new users. |
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Define the roles at different levels. |
Additional help articles:
- Why doesn't every new user get assigned a role?
- Why does an admin also get added to the team?
- What does it mean to inherit roles?
- How do inherited rights work in Coursetune?
Finding and seeing user roles
If you get questions about who you’ve already added and their roles, you can look them up using the articles below.
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Find a user’s role. |
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Find recently added users. |
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See all the roles assigned to a user. |
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See all your roles. |
Growing your team
As you grow your team for collaboration in Coursetune, you can maximize the tools and align even more of your curriculum for continuous improvement. There’s no race to the finish. You should follow and discuss intentional strategies for adding people and giving them tasks to accomplish. Use these resources to support a grassroots effort of growing your team.
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Share these links to learn the talk of Tuning. |
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Prepare your team for collaborative curriculum discussions. |
Use this guide for better curriculum discussions. |
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Share user guides to help your team. |
This article includes a list of all available user guides. |
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Get inspired by this K-12 article about assessment design and how Coursetune can help remove barriers to learning. |
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Collaborating in Coursetune
Curriculum transformations happen when teams rally around a goal with an alignment mindset. We’ve designed Coursetune for teams to collaborate, manage projects, and track progress. As the Admin, it will be your responsibility to give your team the tools they need.
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Use our template to document how your curriculum process works now and how it will change with Coursetune. |
Go to your shared Google Drive folder for your template. or start a new one by copying and editing this template. |
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Share educational videos with your team to set up discussions. |
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Give your team time to explore, play, and prototype on Z-Examples and Play Space. |
Each instance has a folder that includes feature examples, guided course models, and a place to play without affecting the curriculum. |
Planning team training
Culture matters when it comes to planning team training. Every school is unique. Spend time getting to know your faculty’s needs and addressing them with compassion and understanding. The best gift you can give faculty is time to play and explore.
Looking for advice or inspiration for getting your faculty onboard? The Galloway School shared their approach at Coursetune Camp 2021. They discussed what worked for them. They also gave some advice for k-12 schools. Watch the video: Charting a Path of Alignment for K-12 Continuity.
Stage 4- Integrating
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“We really wanted it to be something that the teachers felt engaged with and not just something forced top-down upon them. The integrations with Canvas are a great example., Coursetune can just pop into your Canvas course while you're developing your actual course. You can see your Coursetune map right there.” Lexi Fields, Director of Teaching and Learning, The Galloway School |
What to communicate to your team: “Coursetune supports the processes we already have in place. We can integrate Coursetune with our LMS to make it easy for faculty and staff to communicate and collaborate on their course development.”
What you’ll be doing:
- Evaluating data connections and documenting them.
- Discussing systems integration with stakeholders.
- Setting up and testing connections.
- Organizing resources and support for integration
Integrations with Coursetune
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Coursetune can become the centralized curricular database at your school. There are multiple ways to connect Coursetune to your other data systems. Use the resources below to help you prepare and plan for your needs. |
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Before you start an integration, document your data systems and how they interact. |
Review this deck about systems integration and talk to your Coursetune contact about doing a Data Crosswalk exercise. |
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Use these resources for connecting your LMS. |
Canvas Resources: https://coursetune.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/sections/360002739394-Canvas- Canvas Integration Overview: Moodle Resources: https://coursetune.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/sections/360004983773-Moodle Blackboard Resources: https://coursetune.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/sections/360006809774-Blackboard Moodle Resources: https://coursetune.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/sections/360004983773-Moodle D2L Resources: https://coursetune.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/sections/360007091793-D2L-Brightspace |
Stage 5- Innovating
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“Whether your school uses standards as a guide or not, one thing that's really, really helpful is that Coursetune can load different sets of standards as outcome sets. We're also able to edit those and add to them. It's very flexible.” Stephanie Niednagel, Director of Curriculum, Oaks Christian School |
What to communicate to your team: “Coursetune makes our lives easier. Especially when it comes to reporting and collecting evidence that shows our courses and curriculum align with state standards, institutional benchmarks, or to external accreditation sources. Let’s review our strategic plan and plan for the next big initiative.”
What you’ll be doing:
- Preparing for large reporting projects (i.e., accreditation).
- Engaging broader teams for integration.
- Iterating on structure and organization.
- Revisiting your strategic planning.
Reporting on standards
One of the most frequent uses of Coursetune is mapping courses to standards. We will import any outcome set you own and have rights to. We also have a large number of sets available for K-12 clients -- from Common Core to CASEL. Watch this video to see how Mapping sets can make your life easier.
Mapping also gives you the ability to show parents and other essential players clear pathways for students as they continue their educational careers. The reports in Coursetune provide you with clarity and rigor. Reports show you what your faculty taught, when they taught it, and why.
You can also use outcome sets for mapping more than just standards. You can map institutional values, ethics, and DEI goals. Share this inspiring article with your team: 3 Ways Curriculum Mapping Enables Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Creating horizontal and vertical alignment
A vital initiative for many K-12 schools is horizontal and vertical curriculum alignment. This goal requires collaboration, time, and creativity. Once your data is in Coursetune, you can treat it like Legos; move it around, copy it, put it in other folders, and test it out with reports. With the four-level folder structure of Coursetune, you can customize your data organization in multiple ways. You may have the same course in a grade level, a discipline, and a core curriculum. Your reporting needs will dictate how you name and structure your folders.
How can the same course live in multiple places? By using a source course and creating proxy courses. Here’s a guide to shared curriculum that explains how to use proxy courses: Guide to Shared Curriculum.
Designing online programs
Designing online programs? At Coursetune Camp 2021, Oaks Christian School discussed using Coursetune to align their face-to-face and online courses. Watch their video for guidance and best practices to make the most of Coursetune’s online design work features.
The Variations feature ensures consistent curriculum architecture (what we call the nucleus) while allowing for natural variation in modality, instructor, learning resources, assessments, and time frame. Use this feature to create different modalities based on courses that already exist. Read: The Glossary entry for Variations. Use this resource to start making course level variations: How do I edit a course (level-4 object) variation?
Sharing your success
Once you’ve made progress on your goals and initiatives, we’d love to document your success and celebrate with you! Part of our process involves establishing your plans at the very beginning and then looking back at what you’ve accomplished. We use this as a foundation for capturing your success story and then build it out using interviews with your team. These case studies can become powerful tools to share with stakeholders and peers. See how other teams have shared their wins by reading through the case studies on our blog here. The Galloway School offered us 10 reasons they switched to Coursetune.
Troubleshooting
What to do when things are slow:
Coursetune is a web application that runs best in Chrome. To optimize your speed, follow these steps.
- Clear your cache and refresh the page.
- Limit the number of tabs you have open.
What to do when someone can’t log in:
If a team member didn’t receive a welcome email, follow these steps to help get them online.
- As an Admin, you can set a temporary password for the user. Use this article to find out how. Once the user logs in, they can update their password.
- They can log in at https://app.coursetune.com/. Their email is the user name.
- Give the user this article: How can I change my password?
- Or, the user can click the “forgot password?” link on the login screen and follow the prompts. Send them this article to guide them: How can I reset my password if I can't log in?
When you can’t remember what something was called:
If you want to know the name of something in Coursetune, start by browsing the Glossary. Many items in Coursetune can take on custom names, so you will want to keep your team Glossary updated on your shared google drive. Ask your Coursetune contact for the link if you’ve misplaced it.
When you can’t remember where something was:
There’s a single tool that can help you search across all of Coursetune called Universal Search. If you need to search for a course element, an outcome, or an activity asset, you can use the search tool to find it and jump to the item location. Read: How to search for something in Coursetune.
Why someone can’t do something:
Usually, it’s because their role and permissions aren’t set correctly. Here are some resources for troubleshooting:
- Check the roles of a user.
- Make sure you’ve set the roles to the correct level. Read how roles and levels work.
- If you need to change someone’s role, use this guide.
Coursetune is a community.
Support is always available.
- Consider adding a regular team training each month with Coursetune support. Email support@coursetune.com for more information.
- Be sure to use the Coursetune help site. This customer portal offers many searchable articles and videos on how to use Coursetune. While you’re there, drop us a line in the live chat and one of our support staff will help you with anything you need.
- You can also access our live support chat while you’re logged into Coursetune. Check out the chat window in the bottom left corner of the screen. (Make sure you’re using Chrome.)
- Community events happen quarterly on a variety of topics. Check out our events page for more information.
- Want to talk to another Coursetune partner? Reach out to your Coursetune contact to request a "Curricunaut Connection" with a fellow Coursetune partner.
Here are other ways to contact Coursetune support:
Call: (866) 860-8863
Email: support@coursetune.com
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