Navigation & Signposting

Designing clear and effective pages in your VLE.

We want the student experience on our Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) sites to be as intuitive and seamless as possible. This means being clear, consistent and concise with the language you use, and how they move around our online systems. Take a look at the guidance below on how to achieve clear, consistent, and concise navigation and communication on your VLE.

The boxes below give a summary of the information on this page:

Clear Communication

Clear instructional language is essential for helping students to find resources within the VLE.

Effective Navigation

A smooth learning journey requires a well designed and logically structured VLE site.

Signposting

Proper signposting can guide students through the learning materials and resources, thereby enhancing their learning experience.

Clarity

To support students that come from a variety of different backgrounds, it is important to be as clear and considered with your instructions as possible, especially when looking at your use of language. To support engagement and accessibility, you can try the following below:

Clear Labelling

When you add online resources, such as PowerPoints, PDFs or other online learning media. Make sure you’re labelling clearly what the resource is within the title of the file and description, and what your expectations are of the student. This can include adding descriptions or following file naming conventions. For example, if you’ve sent students a PDF, you’d like them to read before a session next week, try something like:

PDF | Pre-Reading on [subject] for session on [date]
Description: We will be examining [subject] in the session on the [date]. Please take 15 minutes to read through this PDF and be ready to discuss your thoughts about the reading within the classroom.

In this example, it is clear what the resource is, how students are supposed to interact with it, and what your expectations are going forwards. This example uses the format of timing, action and output. That is, how much time you expect the student to invest, what it is you expect the student to do, and what you expect from the student as a result.

Consistency

Expressing uniformity in your use of language and ensuring consistency in how students navigate your site are both powerful tools you can use to help students access their content more easily.

Keeping your formats consistent across multiple modules and programmes means that students spend less time figuring out how to access your content and spend more time learning what you want them to.

Visit our Structure and Course Design (web) page for more information.

Templates

One way to ensure consistency across a variety of different modules is to follow a template, which you disseminate across your School or subject area for many people to make use of. Templates allow staff to easily put together course structures and activities and manages student expectations on consistency. Ask your School or your Digital Lead if you’d like to get started with templates.

Coherency

Using concise, instructional language is essential. If you are setting a student a task, consider the following:

How long will the task take?
What are you expecting the student to do?
How does the task link to your outcomes or wider learning opportunities?
What should they do with the information once the task is complete?
Do you need to provide any relevant supporting information or materials?