Online courses can be created interactive activities that help engage students while meeting their individual learning styles. When creating an online course, it is important to remember
1. course objectives
2. the different learning styles students possess - thus influencing different ways in which material is delivered
3. time frame for course completion - influencing types of activities presented
Julie Ann,
Good choices. Communication will assist in the other two choices. Thanks!
When authoring my own online course, I believe the three most important things to consider are modes of assessment, methods of communication and opportunities for interaction.
Amanda,
Good points. We have to make sure the students understand the expectations and are engaged in the learning process. Thanks!
The items that need to be considered the most important are content, student engagement/understanding and objective goals. How should the over all content be presented to the learner in a way that would make sense to them while teaching the goals of the module or course.
Dianne,
How would I handle authoring the online course? I would work through an online meeting program to meet with an online instructional designer, if available, and work with the Learning Management System to set everything up. Does this answer your question?
Hello Dr. Crews,
How would you handle this if you taught online at a school that did not have a local campus?
Thanks,
Dianne
Aleksandra,
You bring up some very good points and I like that you asked them in question format. These are all questions we need to ask.
Thanks!
When authoring your own online course the three most important things to consider are:
1. How will content be delivered? This requires an understanding of how the students learn and/or the type of students you will be teaching in that particular course.
2. How will students receive content? This also requires an understanding of the student type.
3. How will students be assessed? This requires an understanding of the type of information that needs to be delivered to the students and appropriate ways that learning can be assessed.
Heather,
Good choices. These certainly are key aspects we need to think about when authoring and teaching online courses. Thanks!
Probably 1) learning objectives, 2) student competency level (both with regards to subject matter and with academic skills to perform assignments), and 3) length of course
Terry,
So glad you started with the alignment of objectives and course outcomes. These are key elements to everything in the class. Thanks!
Three important elements is to align your objectives and goals for the class, ensure everything is stated within the syllabus and to teach proper communication to our students.
Kevin,
Right on! We don't want the students to be confused and we want them to know what they are working toward. Good job.
Eyad,
The objectives/outcomes are the first consideration. We have to think about this in all we do in our assignments, rubrics, course development, etc. Thanks!
It is important to keep the students, audience, and the learning objectives. This will make sure that the learners will be able to meet the objectives and that the content is not to confusing for the learners.
The three most important things to consider when writing an online course is the objective of what they will learn, the outcome and the competencies. These will create the foundation of the course and layout the learning objective to the student. It will also help them see where they can use these outcomes in everyday life. Sometimes a course helps a student with real life situations that makes them think and calculate different situations that they may encounter in their lives.
As a matter of fact, I have authored several courses in the past. This is eleventh year with AIU. However, I didn’t understand several learning or education principles until after I wrote a few courses for AIU. Specifically, I knew nothing about Bloom’s taxonomy, formative feedback, and summative feedback until after I wrote/reviewed three courses for AIU. My background is electrical engineering and computer science and as such, I wasn’t familiar with education courses.
Now I have to address the forum question. Knowing what I know now, if I am going to author a new online course today, the three most important thing to consider are (1) the knowledge that my audience (my student in this case) already has, (3) the learning needs of audience or what he/she needs to know, and (3) delivery methods or how to deliver the course to my audience in the most efficient and effective way.
The knowledge that my student already has is very important. It may be nonsensical to create a course that uses concepts that that students will find very difficult to comprehend or assume that students are already familiar with the concepts when they are not. Some of the tools that can be used to gather information about what students already know include (1) pre-requisite courses, survey of faculties and students, review and analysis of student’s knowledgebase in an institution.
Once, the knowledge that the student already has is known, the steps is identification of the learning needs of the students. At this point, it may be necessary to use a course-module framework. Using a course-module framework is important because it helps students build upon prior knowledge. The course-module framework is the learning component that helps to sequence information for students. It is like a roadmap that helps students to identify what they have learned and what the need to learn going forward. Once the learning needs are identified, the next steps will be to create the course contents. The course content is the knowledge or information regarding a set of skills that students need to learn. Content can take many forms such as text, audio, video clips, graphs, or pictures. Content should match the learning objectives of the course module and in turn apply to the objectives of the course. All components of the content should complement each other and fit within the module template.
Last but not the least, a determination of the delivery method or methods should be made. For learning to be effective, contents must use proper vehicle for delivery. A good delivery should consider content style and utilization of the appropriate online tools available through learning management systems (LMS) to help present content in a variety of ways to address all students' learning styles. For the content, an anomaly known as modality effect that occurs when information is provided as texts instead of using a more suitable method must be prevented. To avoid the modality effect, online course designers should ensure that textual contents are presented in another more suitable delivery method. To do this, textual contents should be designed or re-designed to be delivered through different media such as video clips, graphs, or pictures.
Daniel,
I love that you asked questions to determine what instructors need to think about when developing an online class. Thanks for giving us food for thought.
I believe that three very importanct factors that should be considered in the authoring of an online course are:
1. The method of content delivery-One must answer the question: How will the content of the course be delivered?
2. The method of content reception-The question: How will the student body receive the content?
3. The assessment method-The question in this case is: How am I going to assess my students knowledge? In essence, I need to be able to determine what my students know and what they can do.
