Once logged in as a teacher, Claroline displays the current list of your course sites. If this is your first time in Claroline, this list will be empty. To create a new course site, click Create a course site in the menu to your right. Enter information into the fields as follows:

• Course title: This is the title of your class site as it will be displayed in the course listing on the main Claroline page. For example, "Algebra 1".
• School: If you are creating a site for a class, select your school. If you are using Claroline for a division-wide project, such as coordinating a committee, select DIV.
• Short Course Identifier: This needs to be a relatively short word that is unique in the system. The identifier must be unique because it defines the URL to your new class site. If you are teaching a class that nobody else teaches, such as AP Calculus, enter something like "AP_CALCULUS". However, if this is a class that others teach as well, like Algebra 1, please include your name in the short identifier, like "ALG1_SMITH". Do not use spaces or any "strange" characters other than the underscore.
• Professor(s): (Yes, this system was designed for a university environment). Enter your name here as you would like to have it displayed on the Claroline main page course listing. For instance, if you want it to display "Mr. Smith" instead of "John Smith", change it here. If there are multiple people teaching the course, enter their names here.

Before you start customizing your new class web site, it is important to understand that you will be seeing two different views of your site. One view is the public view; this is the way your students and anyone else on the web will see your site. You can see this view by clicking on your course from the class listing on the main Claroline page. The other view is the way you see it when you are logged in to Claroline as a teacher. This mode gives you extra controls for administering the site.

There are a number of modules available for use in Claroline. Listed below are that ones that you are likely to find most useful with an explanation of what they do.

• Schedule: Here you can post a schedule of upcoming events in your class. You may want to post upcoming due dates or test times. The schedule is always displayed in chronological order and the orange "Now" arrow always inserts itself before the next upcoming event.
• Documents: This may be the single most useful module in Claroline. Here you can upload files to make them available for students to download. Please note that Claroline does not attempt to display any documents itself; it merely allows students to download them in their original format. Thus, if you post a Microsoft Word document, your students must have Word on their own computer in order to view the document. PDF and HTML documents are just about the only formats that you can assume any computer can view. Check with your students to find out what kinds of documents they will be able to view on their computers.
• Announcements: While some people may wish to use the "introductory text" that appears on your course home page above the modules for posting announcements, this module is also available. The advantage of posting announcements here is that the announcements are archived in a list.
• Forums: Forums let your students interact in an online exchange. You can set up a discussion forum for your class and create some discussion topics within it. Students can then post replies to the forum. Be very careful using this module. Anybody in the world could find your forum and post any message to it. As a teacher, you have the ability to delete posts made by others, but you will have to take an active role in moderating the forum. If the forums are abused, deactivate the module. Please deactivate the forums module whenever you are not using it.
• Links: This section allows you to maintain a list of links to other websites - essentially like bookmarks shared with the whole class.
• Student Papers: This module allows students (from the public view) to upload documents for display on the course site. Because anybody on the internet could post documents here, we do not recommend enabling this module.
• Course description: This module is probably not particularly useful. While it does allow you to post some text about your class, the interface for doing so is a bit awkward. Use it if you wish, but my recommendation is to put your introduction and description in the "introduction text" that shows up above the modules on your course home page.

When you first create new course web site, Claroline places some default content in your class in an attempt to demonstrate to you what can be done in the system. While it is intended to be instructive, the first thing you want to do after creating your course site is to delete the default items. For instance, there is a file called "Example Document.pdf" that is in your Documents folder. There are some default announcements, links, and events that you will want to modify or delete.

We have all intentions of maintaining our Claroline system for years to come, allowing you to reuse the material on your course web site year after year. If you anticipate that you might use your course site again in the future, there is no need to delete it at the end of the semester.