Begin with the End in Mind
As with in-person classes, the best place to start designing an online course is by thinking about the end.
- What do you want students to know and be able to do at the end of the course?
- How could you know students have achieved these goals? Identify a plan for your final assessment(s) so the entire course builds towards student success.
- Next, list the main concepts and skills needed to get to these outcomes. Those will be the drivers of the different units in the course.
- Finally, identify existing materials you have or, more likely, find already existing materials online in some beautiful format that you can draw upon for building student understanding and transfer.
- There is NOTHING wrong with using a podcast by someone else to deliver content in your course.
- There is NOTHING wrong with integrating a video made elsewhere into your course.
- Make your life easier by opening your content to the world of what has already been created by someone other than you.
The Single Most Important Thing
Student evaluations of online learning experiences correlate with one factor more than any other: Their sense of the instructor's presence in the course.
Once you accept this, the key is to make providing that sense of presence in the most productive and least demanding way possible. You always want the learners working hard at the appropriate tasks to further their understanding/skills. You can design for this by making genuine tasks and reassuring them that you are there for them--ready, willing, and able to help--without sacrificing your life to the course. . |
Basics of Structure
The easiest way to design an online class is in a weekly format. Each week the same structure in an LMS. For instance:
Another way to ensure the class is manageable for you and for students is to GRADE AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE. Give TONS of feedback and direction, but spend very little time on "grades," In general, grades do not improve outcomes,. The right feedback on what matters improves outcomes. Use your expertise to TEACH them and don't waste your precious time sorting them.. Make formative assignments pass/fail. The goal is to keep them on the treadmill and keep track of their progress. A one point assignment does this. You want to be able to communicate when needed: "You do NOT get this yet." But you don't want them freaking out over a C. The point is to make them try harder, not freak out. Save yourself a lot of tedium by avoiding "bean counting." Give one grade per week for having met all the requirements of that week. Also, to make your effort giving feedback "count" the most, have assignments turned in on the discussion board rather than the dropbox. Provide feedback publicly when it will help everyone in the class better understand the concept (example/non-example). Require that they read all the discussion board posts you write. This means you won't have to say the same thing repeatedly. The first person who turns the assignment in will help improve the outcomes of all the future submissions by garnering those correctives and redirects from you that they can all learn from. |
Assessment made Easy (or Easier)
In order to make sure the students are working harder than you are--and achieving at the level you want them to--make the FINAL assessment material something that is built across many weeks of the course with multiple opportunities for feedback and improvements. Again: formative feedback (feedback on progress toward the outcome) helps change the learning outcome. Summative feedback (feedback on the final product) has less impact on learning outcomes.
Structure that final assignment so they are getting feedback from multiple sources over time, so that the work of "just in time feedback" isn't all on your shoulders. For week-to-week check-ins on acquisition of discrete knowledge use automated low-stakes quizzes. You and the student learn how well they are tracking. A final BIG heavily weighted assignment might build across your course like this:
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