Faculty/Staff Search

OR

Department/Unit Search

  1. Home
  2. Get Started
  3. Supplementary Courses

Supplementary Courses

What is a Supplementary Course?

A Supplementary Course is a type of course in OWL Brightspace used to host and/or manage content such as prototype courses, training courses, shareable learning modules, and other supplementary academic content. 

These courses are not connected to the Office of the Registrar, so student data such as final grades and enrollments cannot be shared between the course and Student Centre.

Supplementary courses can be used for the following use cases: 

  • Training
    • To host and facilitate training courses for Western students, staff, and/or faculty.
  • Learning modules
    • To share and distribute learning modules for use in academic courses. 
  • Content development
    • To develop the content, assessments, and structure of your academic course or program in a central template.

Frequently Asked Questions

  • Technical requirements:
    • The course is used by Western users with a Western or Western Continuing Studies account. Guest users will need to obtain a Western account to use OWL Brightspace AND
    • OWL Brightspace has the tools or features needed to facilitate the course, AND
    • There is no alternative solution or tool that offers a better user experience
  • Content requirement:
    • The content is aligned with the academic mission and relevant to Western’s academic goals, values, and strategic priorities, AND
    • The ‘course’ is not an officially recognized academic course[1] AND
    • The ‘course’ serves as a structured[2] resource for academic or professional development, such as training or skill-based modules tied to academic programs or academic courses, AND
    • Registration and/or completion of the 'course' needs to be documented or tracked. 
  • OWL Brightspace requirements:
    • The course must have a start date.
    • The course must have an end date a maximum of three years after the start date.
[1] Academic courses at Western (Undergrad, Graduate, Professional) typically include the following features: credit value, course code, delivery mode defined, assessments and learning objectives. 
[2] “Structured”—content is intended to be delivered in a prescribed manner that guides the learner through the content, and not just a file storage solution. 
  • To request a new Supplementary Course, submit a Jira Service Desk ticket and complete the required form. All requests are subject to approval. 

    If you are requesting a new Supplementary Course to replace the current use of an OWL Sakai Project Site, please follow the instructions on the OWL Migration website.
There are two roles in Supplementary Courses: Maintainer and Member. More information on these roles is available on the Roles and Permissions page.  

There are three options for enrolling users in Supplementary courses: 
  • Request bulk-enrollment 
    • Submit a ticket to the WTS Helpdesk with a spreadsheet file containing the Western Usernames of your course members and the roles they need (Maintainer or Member). 
  • Request Discover
    • Discover is a feature in OWL Brightspace that allows any Western user to self-enroll in your course.
    • You can share a direct link with users to join your course. 
    • This feature is only available to some Supplementary Courses and does not apply to Academic courses, Sandbox courses, or Reference courses.
    • Submit a ticket to the WTS Helpdesk to request Discover.
As a Maintainer in a Supplementary Course, you can edit the following Course Offering Information:

  • Course Name
  • Course Description
  • Course Status
  • Course Image and Banner Text

If you need to change your course start and end dates, please note that a course can only have a maximum date range of 3 years. If you need to move your start date up, the end date may need to change accordingly. Requests to change course dates can be made to the WTS Helpdesk.

To update the aforementioned course information using the course offering tool: Select "Manage Course" in the navigation bar on the course home page. Then, go to Course Admin > Course Offering Information.

If your Supplementary Course end date is approaching and you need to continue to offer it, you can either renew it or request a new course.

If your current Supplementary Course end date is 1 or 2 years after the start date, you can:

  • Request to renew the existing Supplementary Course
  • Request a new blank Supplementary Course

If your current Supplementary Course end date is 3 years after the start date, you can:

  • Request a new blank Supplementary Course
As a Maintainer, you will retain access to your course after the end date and be able to copy course materials to your new Supplementary Course. Course data, such as enrollments, grades, activity, and submissions, will not copy between courses.

Both requests can be made by submitting a Jira Service Desk ticket.

Please follow the instructions on the OWL Migration website to request the migration of a supplementary course.

If you have specific questions about OWL Brightspace, please contact the WTS Helpdesk or explore the personalized support options available on this page.