What is a blueprint site?

A blueprint site is a course in ICON that is ongoing – not tied to any given semester – and to which students do not have access. Essentially, it is a place where you can build your ICON site with everything you need outside of due dates, and then simply import it into the regular semester course and all you will need to do is set due dates.

By using a blueprint course, you are able to set up and tweak your course without affecting current semesters, and it gives you the ability to plan far in advance. You can also make changes for the coming semester based on student feedback and performance in the current semester. They can also be shared between instructors and within departments.

How can you use blueprint sites in your course?

Blueprints are a very effective tool for large courses, as you can reformulate and plan your upcoming semesters at your leisure in the blueprint course, build assessments, add materials and resources, and store course documents in a way that everyone on the teaching team and within your department can have easy access to them.

Because they’re not tied to a course, you can build multiple versions of exams, add variants to existing assignments, and more, choosing to import the necessary information into the new course as its made available to you before classes start. Moreover, you can easily share your course with a new instructor by giving them access to the blueprint, and they allow you to make courses in a sequence have a coherent look and design. This makes it easier for students to hit the ground running in subsequent courses as they know what to expect and where to find resources and help as necessary.

What results can you expect from incorporating blueprint sites into your course?

While it would be hard to quantify the exact benefits of using blueprint sites for your large courses, many departments that build their courses this way can attest to their utility. The Department of Chemistry uses blueprint courses extensively as they often switch roles and teaching assignments between their general education courses, and therefore all teachers have access to the blueprints and can engage with them as necessary. This makes it far simpler to hand the course off to a fellow faculty member or a visiting instructor.

Moreover, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese in the Division of World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures uses them for their Spanish general education courses. Since the semester course site is shared between so many instructors and teaching assistants, using a blueprint site helps their administration keep changes consistent and improvements coherent for the coming semesters.

A blueprint course is about making it easier for you to begin the new semester with as little trouble as possible; there are so many moving parts at the start of a new semester, a tool that can streamline that process can be a powerful addition to your skill set.

Who can help if you’re interested in incorporating blueprint sites into your course?

If you are interested in getting a blueprint for one of your courses, please reach out to the ITS Help Desk at its-helpdesk@uiowa.edu and they will put you in contact with someone who can help you.

If you would like to explore how you could use this in your course, please reach out to the Center for Teaching for assistance and guidance on how best to implement these activities.