Planning Your Online Course

There are lots of things to think about when planning how to deliver an online course. The following sections will help you think about some of these, but also take advantage of the members of the PSU Online team for more help in creating a course that will be a success.

What is the first step for establishing an online course?

The first step is to contact one of the PSU Online team members. Based on the type of course you are teaching and the support that you need, you will be assigned a PSU Online instructional designer to help establish your course. Instructional designers help to make the development process as painless as possible by working with you to develop and implement content, interactive activities, and assessments. Details of the instructional design process are presented in the document below.

Instructional Design Process at Portland State University

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What are some techniques for developing effective online courses?

Plenty of Interaction!

  • Provide immediate and rich feedback to students. Students need reassurance that a real person is on the other end of the computer.
  • Threaded discussions are the most valuable part of your online class.
  • Provide motivation, support, and feedback for discussions by thanking students and summarizing points.
  • Student-to-student interaction is just as valuable as teacher-to-student interaction.
  • Provide clear policies on when and how you will be available. Let students know when you go on vacation or will be unavailable for a few days.

Engage the Learner

  • Create activities where students integrate new ideas with existing knowledge.
  • Students remember only 10% of what they read or see, but 80% of what they do and 90% of what they teach others.
  • Students can become overwhelmed by the vastness of resources on the Internet. Be specific when asking them to find resources on the web.
  • Make students responsible for their learning by asking them to summarize the weeks discussion, take a lead of a discussion, or teach others a concept.

Student-Centered Techniques

Traditional lectures don't work online. You will need to provide students with information but you must get them involved in discovering the concepts and knowledge.

  • Use metaphors, examples, and real-life examples to explain text material. Provide short audio, video, or slide shows to enhance units.
  • Design group projects and small group discussions.
  • Have students role-play, act out simulations, and participate in mock trials or debates.
  • Use peer-review for projects or papers and have students assist each other before grading. If this is done, students will feel more motivated to display their work publicly.

Motivate Students Online

  • Provide return for their involvement - % of grade.
  • Stress student responsibility. Online learning is not a passive learning environment.
  • Arrange peer evaluations of work.
  • Post students assignments as positive examples.
  • Give positive feedback. Send them virtual vacations or give them virtual gold stars.
  • Reach out to silent students with private e-mail of concern. It is easier for these students to drop out in this environment.

Design: Use the Technology Appropriately

  • Balance between presentation and content. An effective course has multimedia and use of technology - but you don't want to overdo it.
  • Appropriate use of technology. Students should spend their time learning the course content not learning new technology.
  • Students need time management skills to learn online. Design your units within a framework so they know what to expect and get into a weekly routine.
  • Reconsider evaluation methods. You may need to redesign methods for this medium.
  • Personalize your course. Your personal touch will make a big difference in how a student views the learning environment.

Preparation

  • Make sure you have a certain amount of computer literacy and know how to use the system well in advance of the course start date.
  • Expect that your online course will take longer to design and teach than a traditional face-to-face course. Teaching online is NOT easier for you and the student. It is simply more convenient.
  • A well-designed and organized course and instructor will lessen course "maintenance" time.
  • Always go through the course from a student's perspective before the class starts. Make sure what is expected of the students is clearly stated. Also, check all links and dates.

The PSU Online Team has also developed an orientation handbook that provides faculty members new to online design with a number of helpful tools and tips. A hardcopy of this handbook will be given to you during your first meeting with an instructional designer. Or you can use the link below to view a copy online.

Instructional Design Handbook for Online Course Development: A Resource for PSU Faculty

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What are some general design principles for creating a good online course?

A good online courses follows the same design principles as creating a good face-to-face course. The only difference is in the delivery mechanism. While you may gain interaction in a classroom by breaking into small groups and discussing an issue, you do the same thing online by breaking into small groups and having students participate in posting to a discussion board, typing in a chat room, or exchanging papers for peer review. Below are generally accepted design principles.

Good structure
Organization of the course and materials must be defined and clear to the student. Just as in a well-designed textbook, an online course must have internal consistency among the different parts. Students should at all times know what they are trying to learn and how they will be expected to demonstrate their knowledge (assessment). It is easy for online learners to become lost or confused if content and instructions are not explicit. Good design will minimize this.

Clear objectives
With clear objectives, students can easily identify the expectations for the course, select appropriate learning experiences to achieve the objectives, and have a better chance at being successful on course knowledge evaluations.

Small units
Contents and the way the materials are organized and presented should be broken down into small units. These small units may correspond to a single instructional objective or learning activity. Additionally, these small units may become learning objects and be reused for review or in other courses teaching the same objective.

Planned participation
When opportunities for interaction, through student activities and exercises, are embedded throughout the course students become better engaged and learn in more depth. Interactions may be as simple as participating in an online discussion to as complex as writing an essay, sharing it through peer reviews and critique, and reworking the paper and including it in a larger project. The key is to keep students engaged with the material, the instructor, and with each other.

Repetition
Important ideas are repeated periodically (especially in summary) to provide reinforcement. Online repetition is even more important than face-to-face simply because many students are unaccustomed to reading or gathering information online and easily miss important elements. The repetition can be done through actual restatement of concepts or by linking back to previous sections or additional examples of the same concepts.

Synthesis
Important ideas expressed in student material are woven together. Just as in the classroom environment, students need synthesize what they are learning. Online this is done through interactions and through assessments just as they are face-to-face.

Stimulation
Through the use of interesting formats, content, or guests, materials capture and hold student attention. This can be accomplished through the use of graphics, examples, simulations, and any of the interactive components already discussed previously.

Variety
Information is in a number of different formats and different media to appeal to varying interests and backgrounds. Additionally, students have different learning styles. While one student grasps concepts more easily by seeing a diagram, another may prefer to read words describing the concept. Yet another needs to actually apply the concept in the real world. The more variety you provide, the more success your students will experience.

Open-ended
Assignments, examples, and problems are open-ended so students can adapt the content to their own interests or situation. This is a tenet of student-centered learning. Whenever possible, provide students with choices on how to learn material and the means for applying concepts outside of the classroom.

Feedback
Students receive regular feedback on their assignments and progress in the course. This principle is particularly key in the online environment where students have an expectation for more immediacy and a fear that assignments are lost or forgotten when they don’t hear from the instructor. Timely feedback is very important to enhancing student confidence in the online system and in maintaining motivation.

Continuous Evaluation
The effectiveness of the materials, media and instructional methods are routinely assessed. This is part of quality control for both yourself and your students. When using technology regular evaluation of media and methods needs to be stressed even more as keeping up with changing technology and student needs becomes more important.