Sustainability: Maintaining your site

Once you have created your site you will need to put some effort into maintaining it throughout the semester and before each semester that it is released to students.

Remember – the amount of maintenance work involved depends on the complexity of your site.

Examples of the types of maintenance you might have to consider for your eLearning sites:

Maintenance during semester

• Marking of online assignment submissions
• Marking of some questions in quizzes (short answer and paragraph questions cannot be automatically marked)
• Moderating discussions online ( a successful discussion board needs regular attention!)
• Adding new content (lectures notes, audio files etc)
• Ensuring external links remain active and relevant

Maintenance at the beginning of each semester

• Updating the unit of study outline with current dates
• Adding dates to Calendar and removing those from previous semesters
• Updating timetable information
• Updating lecturer / tutor information
• Updating assignment submission and field trip dates