Table of Contents

Creating a Course Style and Settings Guide

Jason Carroll Updated by Jason Carroll

Overview

The eCornell Course Style and Settings Guide is an essential tool that the LSG team (ID/IDA and QA/CE team) must use to review courses accurately before publication. It is especially helpful for copy editors who need to ensure course accuracy.

The guide contains important details, including:

  • Word/term definitions and important word variants related to the course subject
  • Links to style resource files and unique settings
  • Unique settings that outline ways in which a course may deviate from established standards. Examples include:
    • Assignment Groups
    • Announcements
    • Syllabus
    • Quizzes
    • Discussions
    • Final project
    • Grading schemes
    • Citation style
For more on citation styles, visit Writing and Editing Style Guide

These instructions are meant for IDAs who need to create a new style guide sheet to be used during the eC course review phase.

(screenshot: eCornell Course Style and Setting Guide template)

Workflow Guidelines

Prior to creating the style guide, the IDA must prep the course for review. The IDA performs the following steps as shown in the Wrike task "1. Prep Course for Reviews". Let's take a look at the overall workflow and see where the style guide fits in:

  1. ID:
    1. Sets the task To Do
    2. Ensures IDA is assigned
    3. Modifies the task description as needed
    4. Tags IDA to request the course to be prepped
  2. IDA:
    1. Marks the task In Progress
    2. Creates review sheets as requested
    3. Creates a copy of the eCornell Course Style and Settings Guide.
    See instructions below to learn how to create the style guide.
    1. Completes any additional prep tasks identified by the the ID
    2. Marks the task Done and tags the ID when the task is complete

Notice how the style guide is part of the IDA workflow in step C above. Now let's move on to how to create the style guide.

Creating a new Style and Settings Guide tab

  1. Open the eCornell Course Style and Settings Guide, located in the the Google Drive, or access the file within the QA Tracker.
  2. In the lower left corner of the template, click the small arrow to the right of the 'Template' tab.
  3. Click 'Duplicate'
Do not enter information in the Template tab.
  1. Rename the tab to match either the course or course certification series. Press Return to save. Click the new tab and begin to enter data.
The standard process assumes entries in the style guide are for a single course, but we allow flexibility with nomenclature. A tab for an entire certification series is also possible if needed.

How to use the Style and Settings Guide

After creating the new tab in the style guide, include any specific, unusual, uncommon, or difficult names or terms, as well as capitalization rules and specific usages relevant to the course and necessary for copy editors to know. If there are any source documents that would be useful during the CE or QA process, please provide links to them along with a brief description.

  1. Please fill out the three sections of that file to communicate information about your course to the copy editing and QA team. Copy the template and create a new tab for your course.
    1. Section 1 — Style: The topmost style section is a place where IDs can share any words or phrases that may need special handling or attention by our copy editors due to faculty preference (e.g., they've created a term that needs to be capped each time it appears) or to call out specific terms a copy editor will need to spell correctly (e.g., binomial names of plants, correctly capped and italicized).
      If there is nothing unique to call out to copy editors, this section may remain blank. The rest of the S&S Guide should still be completed.
    2. Section 2 — Style: The middle style section is a place where IDAs can drop links to any documents used in development that may be useful to copy editors (e.g., slide decks read by faculty can be helpful if terms are technical, foreign, created by the faculty, or if the faculty has an accent or is a very fast talker). IDAs may need to consult with the course ID to complete this section.
      Long documents intended for/created by the product team are not helpful to copy editors. Slide decks and other faculty-facing files may be.
    3. Section 3 — Settings: The bottom section, settings, is intended to capture any intentional deviations from our established standards for announcements, course settings, grading, etc. in 8675309, the master course template. Column B lists the standard: complete column C only where deviations occur. IDAs should complete this section, often in collaboration with the ID.
      It is likely that settings are established across an entire certificate, whereas the style information may be course-specific. Please indicate something like "Refer to ABC131's guide" and link to the appropriate document if the setting-specific information established in an initial course's S&S Guide is applicable to later courses.

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