Shared master shells or DIY?

[pebeed]

A question -

Do you work at a school with a shared master shell for your classes or is everything DIY?  I am trying to get a feel for what is the status of online and hybrid shells.

For the record - at a DIY school now with no consistency between course shells.

[sprout]

DIY, but with some master shells as resource compilations for classes with a lot of different instructors.  That's been really helpful in covid times for sharing, for example, online labs.

[Morden]

We're at a DIY university, but our teaching and learning centre has put together some really useful templates that a lot of us are using.

[Aster]

You probably want your own shell, or you will want to get one as soon as you're comfortable with your course and/or your LMS layout.

Master shells limit your autonomy and academic freedom, unless you're the professor controlling the master shell. Functionally, a master shell works a lot like a master syllabus, master exams, master lesson plans, etc...

I only tend to see master LMS shells operated under very specific situations.
- brand new professors getting a "master shell" duplicated for their own use, from a kind colleague who is already teaching the same course type
- co-taught and team-taught courses (which is isn't really a master shell but just multiple professors all teaching the same course section)
- what sprout said (although I've never actually witnessed anybody using a master shell that way)
- graduate students and other "T.A." instructors who are not the Instructor of Record for their course
- sheistier community colleges employing way too many adjuncts as glorified laboratory course T.A.'s.
- for-profit diploma mills

Now a "template", that's arguably something different. A template can be as little as just a format layout. It doesn't require anything specific to the academic content of one's course. Lots of universities will routinely supply a basic template (or give you one on request) when you get your course section programmed into the LMS.

[polly_mer]

If someone is willing to give you a great template, then take it.  Going from scratch when I'd never seen a LMS before I had two weeks to get my shell in place was really, really painful, even with my good friend Google.

[Parasaurolophus]

Totally DIY, although we're required to use Moodle, which imposes some basic constraints.