Instructions

LOGGING IN AND MANAGING YOUR ACCOUNT

To access the Curtis Brown Creative educational platform, type learn.curtisbrowncreative.co.uk (without a ‘www’) into your internet browser. Then, to sign in to the course, type your username and password into the white boxes. Your username and password will have been emailed to you before the course begins, but if you haven’t received these, please email us immediately at cbccourses@Curtisbrown.co.uk.

To manage your profile, click the ‘Edit your profile’ button on the welcome page. You can change your password here and upload biographical information and a photograph of yourself. Please do – so we’re not staring at a grey box for the duration of the course! To upload an image of yourself, click the ‘choose image’ button, then click the ‘upload image’ tab. You can either drag and drop an image into the window, or click ‘select files’ to choose an image from your computer.

 

ACCESSING MATERIAL

The course in which you are enrolled will appear in the dashboard. Click on your course, then scroll down to see the modules currently open (see below).

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On a specified day each week, a new module will open – giving you access to that week’s teaching videos, notes on the topic being covered and writing exercises. You can either access these by clicking on the boxes or by clicking ‘Modules’ in the toolbar at the top right-hand corner of the screen, then selecting the week required. If you’re looking for a specific resource (a video or a writing task to download, for example), you can find it by clicking ‘Resources’ in the toolbar. The Resources page will list all available materials, grouped by module.

To watch any video, simply move your cursor onto the picture then click on the right-facing arrow button in the bottom-left of the video screen. You can make the video full-screen by clicking on the four-arrowed icon that sits between the words ‘HD’ and ‘Vimeo’ in the bottom-right of the screen.

 

DOWNLOADING TASKS AND RESOURCES

To download any of your writing tasks or resources required for a particular exercise, simply click on the ‘Task download’ or ‘Resource download’ buttons within the module. The files will then download to your computer (generally into your ‘Downloads’ folder – unless you’ve specified otherwise). Videos and notes in the platform will not be available for download, however the platform will remain open to you after the course has concluded for the foreseeable future. Though the forums will be closed to further discussion, the full content of the course will remain available for you to access. If, for any reason, the content is made unavailable at some point in the future, you will be notified in advance should you wish to save anything while the content remains available.

 

DISCUSSING COURSE TOPICS

Once a module has opened, you will have access to the Forum to discuss the subject and to post up responses to the writing tasks. To get to the Forum, simply go the module page and click on the ‘Forum’ button. Please note, each module has its own Forum, so if you’re looking for a specific thread, you’ll need to go to the week in which that particular topic was discussed.

Within each module’s Forum will be a number of discussions, including one for each task that requires you to post a response. Please submit your responses to tasks to the forums by typing them directly into the Forum (we recommend writing in Word or another text programme first then cutting and pasting your response into the Forum). For the final task (in which students submit the opening 3,000 words of their novel-in-progress and a synopsis), we ask you to attach your work as a Word document or pdf. Please be aware, though, that attachments will only work if you also type a message in the text box, even if that message is as simple as ‘Here is my attachment.’

When you post in a Forum, your post will be visible to all the other students in your course, as well as your course tutors. Other students can click the ‘reply’ button to comment on your post, and you can similarly reply to other people’s posts. You are able to edit your comments once they have been posted to the forum by clicking the ‘Edit’ button just above and to the right of your post, but you are not able to delete comments once they have been posted. If you have posted a comment that you would like deleted, please email cbccourses@Curtisbrown.co.uk

If you have any problems with any aspect of your online course, please email cbccourses@Curtisbrown.co.uk