The key here is understanding how our different organisational systems work and how they map onto the reality of teaching your module. We're aiming for something simple: all your module data in one consistent place, based on the same set of students. This makes everything easier to access and analyse as you go. Promise.
One Module, One Classroom (Seriously, Just One)
Here's the golden rule: each module = one classroom. That's it. Write it on a sticky note. Tattoo it somewhere visible if you must.
Your classroom is where you invite students and assign work. It's the foundation of everything you'll build. And yes, I know what you're thinking: "But I have three different lecturers teaching different sections!" or "I've got separate theory and practical streams!"
Don't be tempted to create multiple classrooms.
I know it feels intuitive to split things up, but keeping everything in a single classroom makes your data management and analysis so much more robust. Plus, a single classroom can be shared and collaborated on with multiple educators (your whole teaching team can pile in there), and it can be archived or ended at the year's end, making it a perfect replicable unit that mirrors your actual module structure.
The Research Classroom Question 🔬
Before you dive into classroom creation, you need to make one key decision: do you need to see students' conversation history in detail?
If not? Easy. Set up a standard classroom and you'll have full access to their data and analytics, just not the nitty-gritty of individual chat conversations. For most teaching scenarios, this is absolutely fine.
But if you do need to view chat history (maybe you're researching learning patterns, or want to understand exactly how students are engaging with difficult concepts), then you'll want a research classroom. Fair warning: you'll need to prepare a few things in advance:
A research motivation document
Defined start and end dates
Ethical clearance (because we're not monsters)
With a research classroom, students can opt in to share their data, which lets you view their complete chat history and download a full record of all their tutor interactions.
Important bit: For ethical reasons, if students opt out, you won't see their chats. But here's the thing, they'll have exactly the same learning experience as their peers who opted in. Nobody misses out, and you're staying ethically sound. Win-win.
Pathways: The Week-by-Week (or Concept-by-Concept) Container 🗺️
Within your classroom, the main unit of learning is a pathway. Think of it as a container that holds multiple lessons.
Most lecturers model one pathway per week because, and this is the crucial bit, pathways are the only unit where you can set start and end dates. They're also where you decide whether students need to complete lessons in order, or whether they can cherry-pick what they fancy working on first.
What Goes in a Weekly Pathway?
Imagine a typical week in your module. You've probably got:
Learning materials to review
A tutorial session
Maybe an assessed question or submission point
All of this can (and should!) live inside a single pathway. You're encapsulating everything students need for that week in one manageable chunk. This is particularly brilliant if you've got weekly submissions or tutorial questions, because everything's bundled together where students can find it.
But Pathways Are Flexible!
That said, pathways don't have to be time-based. You could use them to model:
One entire unit of work within your module
Distinct areas of learning (like separating theory and practical sections)
Thematic groupings of content
For instance, if your module naturally divides into theory and practical components, you might use pathways to contain those different streams. It's your call, use whatever structure makes sense for how you actually teach.
Lessons: The Individual Building Blocks 🧱
Lessons are where the learning actually happens. Think of them the same way you'd think of:
A single lecture
A tutorial session
An assessed homework question
Any individual unit of work
Within a typical weekly pathway, you might create separate lessons for your learning materials, your tutorial exercises, and your assessed questions. This granular approach lets you keep everything organised whilst also giving you really powerful analytical tools.
Here's why this matters: you can analyse students' understanding on a lesson-by-lesson basis. Want to know how students are coping with that particularly tricky concept in week 5? Dig into that specific lesson and you'll get insights about learning progress, engagement, and comprehension for just that unit of work. It's rather brilliant and very effective.
Putting It All Together 🎯
So when you're building out your module in Mindjoy:
Your classroom = your entire module (one module, one classroom, remember?)
Pathways = time-based (weekly) or concept-based groups of lessons
Lessons = the individual learning units within those pathways
This three-tier structure keeps everything consistent, accessible, and, crucially, easy to analyse throughout the teaching period. No more hunting through three different classrooms trying to work out why the data doesn't match up. No more wondering which version of the module you're looking at. Just clean, consolidated data that actually makes sense.
Future you is already feeling grateful. Now go forth and structure your module with confidence! 🚀