 Teachers in loop are presented with an empty loop course page for each of your modules for the upcoming academic year. These have been auto-created from information in ITS and Course Builder. You will need to manually import content from last year's course to the new one. It is a straightforward process that only requires a few clicks. Your new class of students will only have access to the new course, and last year's students will have access to last year's course. That is why you cannot use last year's courses for this year. You must import your content into your new empty courses. On your loop dashboard, find the new empty course for the upcoming year. Make sure your filter is set to All, except removed from View. Additionally, make sure you are viewing all courses, and not just 12. If you are having difficulty locating your new empty course, switch to List View, which might make it easier to find. If you still cannot find it, use the Course Search feature to see if it has been auto-created. If it appears in the search results, it means it is available on loop, but perhaps you are not enrolled as a teacher. However, if it does not appear in these search results, it means it has not been auto-created. Remember, if you have a module running for the first time in the upcoming academic year, or a module returning having been previously inactive, it won't have been auto-created on loop. If either of these situations apply, visit dcu.ie forward slash iss and log a ticket with the iss helpdesk. If you do already have access, go to your new empty loop course for the upcoming academic year. Remember to check the academic year is correct in the title. From the Actions menu gear icon on the right-hand side, choose Import. A list of courses appears. These courses are those that you are enrolled on as a teacher. It is not a list of every course on loop. You will only see those that you should have access to. Select last year's course from the list. If it is not there, use the search field to locate it. Use last year's academic year prefix and the module code as your search term. In the search results, choose the radio button to select it. Then choose Continue. The default import settings on this screen should suit your needs, but do deselect anything else that you do not need to bring across. Choose Next. You are now presented with the list of all activities and resources from last year's course. It is a good idea to scan through the list and deselect all of the activities and resources you no longer need. Some resources may be out of date, or some files may no longer be relevant. Use this as an opportunity for a quick cleanup of your content. This means your students for the upcoming year will have a fresh lean loop course to access. Make sure to also deselect the items at the top of the list, because these will have already been added during the creation of the new empty course. You may also want to delete your assignments and quizzes and other continuous assessment items, and take the opportunity to design new ones, which is good for supporting students' academic integrity, and helps avoid confusion for yourself, not having old assignments mixed in with new ones. At the bottom of the screen, choose Next. You now need to confirm and review the content you wish to import. If you have left something out, you can go back and select it by using the previous button at the bottom of the screen. It's also important to note that you can import at any stage during the year, so if during the semester you realise something from last year's course is useful, you can use the Import function again to import it from last year to this year's course. Choose Perform Import when ready. Depending on how much content you have chosen to import, it might take a few minutes for the import to occur. Do not select anything on the page or navigate away from Loop. After some time has elapsed, you will receive a success message telling you that the import is complete, so choose Continue to return to your course. Scan through your course page, making sure the activities and resources are in the correct sections. You may need to move some of them around or retitle them and so on. You can make changes like that by turning on editing mode. There are a few other configurations you should make after importing your content and activities. You should configure the contacts block by putting in your name, your office hours and your contact details and your picture. With editing turned on, choose to configure the contacts block. Type your details directly into the text field. When updating your profile photo, you can either link to your photo on the DCU website if you have one, or directly upload a photo. Just make sure that the photo file is not too large, otherwise it will not display properly. Before uploading, resize it to make sure it is about 150 pixels wide. Choose the placeholder image, and then choose the image button on the toolbar. If linking to your DCU website photo, go to your profile page on the website, right-click on the photo, and then copy image address. Then, back in the loop window, paste the address in the URL field. Also be sure to update the alt text to describe the image. If you prefer to upload a photo from your computer, instead, choose browse repositories and upload a file. Then, choose an image file from where it is saved on your computer, and then upload the file. Whichever method you choose, make sure to choose save image to save your profile photo to the contacts block. When the contacts block is updated, choose save changes to return to the loop page. You might also want to edit the template module handbook here with your own modules details. With editing turned on, open the handbook. Use the cog icon in the table of contents block to edit a particular chapter in the handbook. For example, you might want to enter your learning outcomes, or your reading list. The default text in each of these chapters are instructions for you as the teacher, so be sure to check each chapter and edit appropriately so students don't see this instructional text. In particular, you should populate the assessment chapter of the handbook. Use the table to summarise the assessments on your module so that students can see all their assessment expectations in one place. After making changes to a chapter, use save changes and then use the breadcrumb trail to return to the loop module page. You might also want to set up any continuous assessment items at the start of the semester, such as loop assignments or quizzes. You don't necessarily have to have your quiz questions ready to go, for example, but even just setting up the activities and configuring the due date will be a big help for students. These due dates will appear in their loop calendars and their loop timelines, so it will help them in planning the semester ahead. Configuring these dates will also populate the multi-tag timeline report, which allows teachers across a programme to see upcoming deadlines for all modules associated with that programme. This is useful for you and colleagues to map assessment load and scheduling for all of your students. You can add assignments and quizzes by choosing add an activity or resource and selecting the one you wish. You can then populate the relevant details. Information on how to configure particular activities is available on the loop staff support page, which is accessible from the loop top menu. Another block on your loop page is the library guide block. Most pages will come with a link to a subject library guide, but if your block does not have a pre-populated link, you should insert it. The full list of library guides can be found on the library website. With editing turned on on your loop page, choose to configure the library guide block. Select the words school library guide and then choose the hyperlink icon. Copy and paste the subject guide URL from the library website. Choose create link and then choose save changes. The default loop module page template has been designed according to universal design for learning principles. You can find more information about this on the TEU website, dcu.ie forward slash teu under the learning design menu. Lastly, don't forget that you also need to set the start date and end date for your course and you can do that by going to the actions menu and choosing edit settings. Then select the start date, which should be from when the module commences and then enable the end date, which should be whenever the module concludes. This means that students will see their courses and their own dashboard as either in progress, future or past. It doesn't prevent access to the course, however, it just helps students to organize their dashboard. Save the changes at the bottom of the screen to return to your loop course. Full information on how to use loop to support teaching and learning is available on the loop staff support page. If you have any questions, please feel free to join one of our regular loop dropping clinics on Zoom, which are found in the TEU events calendar, which itself can be located on the loop staff support page. Alternatively, you can log a ticket at dcu.ie forward slash ISS.