Related Resources

Quercus Start-of-Term Checklist

This guide provides a quick checklist to ensure your course is ready at the start of term. If you are completely new to Quercus, the Getting Started guide will help you become familiar.

For pedagogical help, course design advice, or Quercus help, please contact the T&L team at teachinglearning.artsci@utoronto.ca.

Access your course ✅

Login to Quercus with your username and password. If you don’t see your course, check that it is enabled on your dashboard. If you can't find it, contact your department administrator and ask them to check your course in ROSI.
Courses are available in Quercus based on the Course Life Cycle, which is generally 4 months before the start of term.

Cross-list (merge) your course sections ✅

Cross-listing is essentially merging courses and course sections together into one primary course. It is particularly helpful for large courses containing multiple lecture times and tutorials that share the same content.
Instructors can cross-list their own courses if they have been added to all course shells that are being cross-listed, or contact T&L for help. We can also rename your course name to reflect the course merging.

Import course content ✅

To reuse previous course content, you can do a course copy, which will allow you to import an entire course or customize which type of content to reuse (eg. Ignore old announcements).
You can also import a pre-made course template from Quercus Design & Templates (includes basic, intermediate, and advanced options).

Set a course homepage ✅

Decide what students see first in your course by setting a homepage. The most common options are Modules and Pages.
NOTE: To set a Page as the homepage, you must mark it is as your “Front Page” in the pages section of the course system.

Decide which menu items students need to access by editing the course menu.
Most course menu items are OFF (and invisible to students) by default, so instructors need to turn on relevant tools in the course navigation tab under the course settings.

Add syllabus and other content ✅

The course syllabus file can be embedded into a page or module, or hosted in the separate built-in Syllabus tool (or both!).
You can organize other course materials using Modules and Pages, which offer different ways to establish structure in the course.
IMPORTANT! Don’t forget to publish all modules, module items, pages, and files that student need to access. Published status is indicated by a green checkmark.

Set up assessments and the gradebook ✅

Each graded assignment you create will also create a column in the Gradebook. Assignment types include Assignments, Quizzes, and Discussions.
Organize your assignments into Assignment Groups with weighting – the system will automatically calculate the weighted grade in the Gradebook.
Finally, decide if your Grade Posting Policy should be set to "automatically" or "manually" (which is the default setting).
TIP: You may wish to hold off on adding assessment until later as the course progresses, or you can create them but keep them unpublished to students for now.

Add TAs to your course ✅

If you have teaching assistants or other course staff, add them to your course using the People tool (by UTORid or utoronto.ca address only)
If your course has multiple sections merged into one primary course (i.e. Cross-listing), TAs can filter the gradebook by their section for easy grading.

Check the "Student View" ✅

You can check what students see in Quercus by selecting the Student View button at the top right corner of the course.

Publish the course ✅

When you are ready for students to access the course, publish the course by selecting Publish in the upper right corner of the course homepage.

Welcome your students ✅

Send a message to your students to the course and provide details on the first class. We recommend creating an announcement, which is an effective and simple way to reach students.
You can also learn about other Quercus communication tools.

Can't find what you're looking for? Consult the Index for a full list of pages or contact the T&L team. Page last updated: May 29, 2024.

On This Page

Related Resources

Quercus Start-of-Term Checklist