Designing Successful Online Courses, Part 1

Step 1: Determine a habitable phase focus. The phase approach begins by encouraging instructors to recognize that designing their online course is only the first phase of their efforts. By organizing work progress into Phase Two, Phase Three, etc., you free instructors from the feeling that everything must be accomplished in their first development effort. Especially if teachers don’t have a full-time instructional design team, incremental development is liberating and reassuring. Any part of a course can be addressed first, especially in a redesign: content sections, sequence, or specific tasks. So, in Step 1, determine which aspect of the course to redesign first (perhaps capstone project, assignments, discussion, or assessment). Then decide what to do second, third, etc. This approach becomes the preliminary plan and can be changed as needs arise.

Step 2 Contemplate the content of the course. Transforming a course to an online format could provide the opportunity to include additional content that was too difficult to include in a traditional class (Conrad & Donaldson, 2004; Simonson et al., 2009). Due to the extraordinary resources freely available online, having students view a greater variety of primary source videos, listen to audio, and read additional material is easily woven into the online platform. As content experts, teachers are best able to select those online resources that are valid and effective. Such content can create invaluable opportunities to discuss and learn to separate fallacy from fact.

Step 3 Reformulate and redesign the activities.Based on the examples provided in the previous sections, consider which course activities need to be redesigned so that in-depth discussion and dialogue can occur in an online environment. Identify two or three activities that can be used in the first round of your course redesign. Using a variety of activities is beneficial. However, activities should be based on the instructor’s experience and avoid overwhelming students with too many types of tasks to master or technical details that are too complex.

Step 4 Unleash the crowd. Even if faculty have never used group assignments in class before, online environments provide a variety of benefits and means to facilitate them. Group interaction in the online environment provides another critical space for dialogue and content discussion (Luppicini, 2007; Palloff & Pratt, 2005). In addition, groups, by their very nature, incorporate peer learning opportunities. When students have to explain their understanding, choices, and reasons to their classmates, they explore the content and process it further.

Step 5 Present expert content with new possibilities. One of the biggest frustrations with poorly designed online courses is that some do not provide students with any teacher-created content. Somehow, these teachers believe that having students read the textbook and answer their questions will be enough to adequately achieve the learning objectives. When designing online courses, consider how to use the online environment to share your expertise. First, decide which modes to use. For example, they might be audio lectures, PowerPoint or multimedia presentations, presentations accompanied by audio narration, video presentations of your lectures or discussions, or visual representations of lecture notes. One of the most powerful strategies is to incorporate a few of these select approaches and vary them. Not only does it hold students’ interest more fully by switching between videos, audio, and then text, but it also appeals to different learning styles and preferences (King & Gura, 2009; Simonson et al., 2009). This experience is one that can be very enjoyable; instructors have the opportunity to include and develop materials that would not have been practical in traditional settings.

These five steps to success get you on your way to planning and designing your online courses. In future installments we will continue this vital discussion. Until then!