Online courses require more upfront preparation than traditional face-to-face courses. You prepare assessments, assignments, lectures, and activities prior to the course launch. Having the content finished before the launch date allows instructors to focus on student engagement. This way instructors can plan for additional time to communicate with their students since most interactions will occur asynchronously. All of this preparation benefits the students allowing for flexible life/work/school schedules.
These four areas are a big part of the design and development process:
- Learning Objectives—You can write a learning objective at any level (e.g. at the course level, at the program level, at the lesson level). Well defined learning objectives should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound). Learning objectives help keep course content, activities, and assessments aligned. They communicate the purpose and goals of what you’re trying to achieve to both students and other educators. Knowing your learning objectives will help you identify where the course needs improvements.
- Assessment—You want to measure that students are, in fact, learning the material. Assessments evaluate students on what they’ve been doing. This could be an exam, a major project, or other assignment that shows student learning. You should align your assessments with the learning objective(s). It is not appropriate to grade students on things they’ve never done before (e.g. combine concepts they have not previously done or perform an activity they’ve only read about).
- Content—Usually in an academic setting, students start their learning by consuming content on the chosen topic. Textbooks are commonly used for this purpose. Content can come in many forms–readings, videos, graphics, lectures, etc. You can create or curate content for your course. Through lending your expertise you are enhancing the material and making the course unique.
- Practice—Students should practice applying the content in ways that are appropriate for the course. Some subjects, like programming, lend themselves very well to practice activities. Others, like understanding abstract theories, can be challenging to develop effective, engaging, and meaningful learning activities. Give students the opportunity to practice the material with ungraded assignments before expecting them to perform well on graded assessments. Provide meaningful feedback on all assessments to guide students in their learning.