We’ve recently introduced section start and end panels in course content. This blog introduces the what and why of these panels. Then gives you some ideas of how you (as a course designer or teacher) can really make the most of section starts and ends to improve learning and retention.
As of February 2025, courses in iQualify automatically get these small panels added to the first and last pages of a section.
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The start panels let learners know they’re at the start of a section and give them a feel for the size of it.
Then, when learners reach the end of a section, they’ll get some information about how much of that section they’ve managed to complete.
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Little bookends for each section of learning.
Now, this is where you as a course designer and/or facilitator come in. We’ve kept our touch minimal to limit the impact on the structure and flow of existing courses. But you don’t have to! You can use these section starts and ends in conjunction with the Aristotelian triptych to support and improve learning.
The Aristotelian triptych (though there’s some disagreement about whether it can actually be attributed to him) is a classic three-part way of presenting content that goes something like this:
There’s also the optional:
This approach is used frequently in learning and for good reason – 1. Gets them ready to learn, 2. Is the ‘guts’ of the learning and 3. Helps to consolidate it.
Note/pullout: Check it out, have a look at the first and last paragraphs of this blog post - we’ve told you what we’re going to tell you and then summarised what we told you at the end.
For those with experience in live lessons, you'll often spend the first few minutes of the lesson warming learners up. Focusing them on what they’re about to learn. Then at the end, you do a re-cap.
Online should be no different really. If anything, you might like to invest a little more in these bookends with online learning than you would with face-to-face learning because more time may have elapsed between study sessions.
Facilitators can post in Talk channels, and authors can build these directly into the course.
We like to think of it as a bit of a sandwich. For each topic you've the meat of the content in the middle, and either side, something to introduce and something to summarise. Like this:
In the example below you can see how you could tell 'em what you're going to tell 'em.
Welcome to the start of our topic - [topic]!
[Topic] is all about [one short and memorable sentence/phrase that sums up this topic ]
We'll start by looking into [first sub-topic, key idea or task]. From there we'll add onto this by [reading/watching/completing...something...]. Along the way you'll be [completing short tasks/quizzes, contributing to discussions at the bottom of pages].
Remember to make use of the notes feature to record key learnings. Or... you can make notes social and that way you can chat with others about something on a page.
Let’s get started!
And a simple section end might look like this.
In the previous section we learned that... now we're going to....
Including these short introductions and summaries for sections can help remind the learners, quickly, what the section is covering and what they've (hopefully) taken away from it.
Section ends can consolidate learning by reminding learners of everything they’ve learned and wrap things up before they move to the next section. This is the “tell ‘em what you told ‘em” part.
Even just these small additions help orientate learners. They tell learners what they should expect or help them connect what they've just learned to what they're about to learn. It's the "connective tissue" of learning and not only makes things much clearer for learners, but also gives the course more of a human feel and conversational tone (which can help with affect and engagement).
Many of you will already be doing these short section starts. So, how can we make them better?
More than simply a list of topics or learning objectives, we want narrative and/or tasks to engage them and activate learners' prior knowledge.
You can activate learners’ prior knowledge through text, a task, or space to recall or share what they already know. You might:
Activating prior knowledge is amazing for learning (we’ve even got a whole blog post on it!) because it:
If you’re finding it difficult to think of some common prior knowledge your learners might have, an alternate technique is to Answer the question "What's in it for me?" and/or tell a story to highlight the importance or growth of the topic. You could:
Let’s take a look at an example that brings a few of these ideas together.
Can you imagine trying to set up meetings before online calendars and emails? You’d have to call each and every invite, and wait while they flipped through their address book. There’d be no “scheduling assistant” to easily see a time that everyone was available. Or, perhaps you’ve had the fun task of trying to wrangle a large group of friends together for dinner without being able to quickly check calendars?
Imagine having to have phone calls like the one in the video below with each person coming to the meeting.
What we’re saying here is online calendars and emails are wonderful time-savers! In this topic, we’ll be exploring how to use them effectively to schedule meetings and send out invites with supporting information.
You’ll probably already know a bit about scheduling meetings. Even if you haven’ t had to do this formally in a workplace, you’ve probably still organised a “meet up” outside of work. Over the next few pages, you’ll be using what you know about getting groups together and applying it to scheduling work meetings.
Start with the task below.
Task: Getting a group of people together
Think about a time when you had to get a group of people together – it could be friends or family for a celebration, colleagues for a meeting, a community group for a fundraiser…
What were some of the things you had to do to be able to meet up?
Hint: Try to focus on aspects of organising the meeting up part of meeting rather than organising any event.
Feedback: You might have said things like:
- Find a place to meet (and that suits people’s dietary or transportation requirements)
- Find a time to meet (when everyone is available)
- Tell people what to do before you meet
- Tell people what to bring along
- Say who else is coming
- Give people guidance on what’s happening for instance: “it’s a super-hero themed dress up party” or “the restaurant’s down a small alley way off Barnard Street and it has a red sign”.
These are typical where, when, what, who and how questions. Essentially we need to find a time and place that suits everyone, then give the attendees (the people coming) the details.
You’ll see in this example we use narrative to highlight the importance of calendar scheduling (and how the technology they’re learning to use has made this easier).
We then ask them to use their prior knowledge to think about what’s important in creating a meeting/event.
Finally in the feedback, we include a little bit of teaching foreshadowing the learning that will be coming up in the next few pages of the section.
Summarising key concepts is not listing topics within the section, it’s re-stating (in as simple language as possible) what the concept means.
Summarise (or “test”) key concepts (and/or tasks) they've mastered. Having a summary is also a source of motivation of learners as it is a reminder of all the things they know now as a result of working through the module. Having a summary is also useful in online distance learning where some time may have elapsed between participant visits to the course.
Linking to the next module allows us to foreshadow the big ideas of a topic and show how interrelated the modules are. It’s also a chance to get learners excited about the next module by writing a bit of a sell (as in the second sentence of the example below).
Let’s take a look at an example.
Ka pai! You’ve now completed the challenge of scheduling a meeting, sending out the invite and including all the relevant details to make an effective meeting invite.
Task: Needed or not in a meeting invite?
In the task below categorise these meeting items into whether they are Always, Often, or Not often needed in a meeting.
Who | What | When | Where | Personal introduction | Meeting purpose/goal | Preparation needed | Agenda | Dress code | ?
Feedback: Remember, for every meeting invite we create, we need at least:
- Who
- What
- When
- Where
And… other useful things you might include are:
- A personal introduction
- The meeting purpose
- Any preparation people need to do before the meeting
- An agenda
Although your courses now have automatic section starts and ends, you can really add to learners’ experiences (and retention) by telling learners what you’re going to tell them (and activating their prior knowledge), telling them, then telling them what you told them.
Authors can pop into their courses now and take a look at how they introduce and summarise sections. And facilitators can add these introductions and summaries into their facilitation plan to share in Talk channels as learners begin topics.
