What is Gold, Silver, Bronze?

Gold, Silver, Bronze is an initiative to improve the quality of our VLE courses. The aim is to provide solid quality guidelines all courses must meet in order to enhance the overall learning experience of our students and thus lead to better success rates and retention.

As of September 2010 every VLE course will be automatically analysed for its learning content and graded against the below criteria as either Gold, Silver, Bronze or In Development status. To assist you in monitoring the quality of your online provision throughout the academic year, medals will be updated once every term.

Bronze

A Bronze course is regularly accessed by at least half the enrolled students, has a full compliment of documents to support the learner, including a scheme of work, course handbook, and all course hand-outs.

To achieve Bronze level the course will contain at least one Moodle forum that is regularly used to post course communications, such as class notes, discussion points, instructions and/or announcements. Bronze courses are also expected to provide links to relevant websites and at least one Moodle assignment.

All course content should be broken up by short text labels that add context or instructions to links and resources.

Silver

Silver level courses are expected to contain a greater level of interactivity and learner input. To achieve this, courses must satisfy Bronze level criteria as well as contain a minimum of three of the following features:

  • 1 Glossary
  • 1 Quiz
  • 3 Web pages with embedded content
  • 1 Chat room
  • 1 Directory

Gold

A Gold course contains all the minimum requirements of a bronze and silver course. In order to achieve a Gold medal the course must also contain more complex interactive activities that encourage the learner to collaborate and actively contribute to the course. Gold level courses are therefore expected to contain a minimum of two of the following:

  • 1 Lesson
  • 1 Wiki
  • 1 Choice
  • 1 Feedback
  • 1 Database

In Development

 A course deemed to be In Development falls short of a bronze course.