What is Course of the Week?

Course of the Week is an award for the most active courses across the CN. The Course of the Week selection algorithm considers number of posts, reflections, post ratings, and Best on reflections. By default, two courses from every institution Channel will be selected for the Course of the Week award. Five personal courses per week will also be selected. Course of the Week is selected every Saturday. A course can only be selected as Course of the Week once every 4 weeks.

The purpose of selecting Course of the Week is to increase learning engagement and encourage participation by recognizing the active students and the excellent job of their instructors. To recognize the achievement, A Course of the Week badge is awarded to the active courses members and their instructors of each selected course. Students can display this badge on their CN ePortfolio to share it with parents, potential employers, school admission officers, and others. Awarded instructors may share this honor on their teaching resumes, in annual report and tenured track evaluation materials.

the Course of the Week badge

Institution Settings & Controls for Course of the Week

Course of the Week controls are available for licensed institutions on the Settings & Controls page of CN Channel. On this page, the settings for Course of the Week can be located in the Modify Default Settings section, under Settings for both Full CN and CN Post.

The checkbox can be used to enabled or disable selection of Course of the Week. If the box is checked, Course of the Week will be enabled (this is the default setting). If the box is unchecked, Course of the Week will not be enabled.

If Course of the Week is enabled, the admin can decide how many courses will be selected as Course of the Week recipients each week. Change the number in the input field to tell the system how many courses to select each week. By default, two courses of the institution will be awarded each week. 

Edit Course of the Week Winner Notification Email Templates

When selected, instructors and students will receive a notification email stating that they have received the Course of the Week badge. There are two separate notification emails, one for instructors and one for students.

Email to instructors

Email to students

These notification emails can be edited from the Badges, Certificates, & Transcripts page of the CN Channel. At the bottom of the Institution Badges section, you can find the Course of the Week badge. There will be two links: Instructor Notification Email Template and Student Notification Email Template.

Note: Since this is an auto-awarded badge and cannot be manually awarded, the badge will be grayed out and disabled. 

Clicking on either of these links will open a popup window for editing the corresponding template. The screenshot below shows the window for editing the Instructor Notification Email Template.

Hint: Institution admins may draft the emails on behalf of department chairs, school deans, provosts etc to further motivate awarded students and instructors. When customizing the email template, an image of the school leadership's signature can be uploaded as an embedded image.