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No Sweat Alt Text
What is “alt text”? Alt text is descriptive text linked to an image, graph, or other visual content that allows users to understand the visual without viewing it. Any image online should contain alt text, but guidelines differ depending on whether the image is simply decorative or related to other content on the page.
Leveraging White Space
Good page design requires balance between white space, or negative space, and positive space. Positive space encompasses all aspects and types of content; on a course page, these objects might include an introductory paragraph, video thumbnail, infographic, callout box, opinion poll, or provocative quotation. Relative to these course components, white space might seem like a nice-to-have. Because it promotes clarity and reduces distortion, however, white space is just as important to instructional page design as content.
Infographic Considerations
An infographic is a visual that combines text, graphics, diagrams, and graphs to present information. When used effectively, infographics can be a powerful tool to guide students through the learning process. “Infographics ask for an active response from the viewer, raising the questions, ‘What am I seeing?’ and ‘What does it mean?’” (Krauss, 2012, p. 10). Infographics also present information in an organized way, which can improve students’ critical thinking, analysis, and synthesis skills (Yildirim, 2016).
Zoom Into Online Learning
Faculty often express concern over how to maintain personal relationships with their students in an online course space; incorporating optional synchronous elements to an online course can help “put a face” to a name. Zoom, the video conferencing tool that allows you to create synchronous experiences for their students, has become ubiquitous in educational and businesses in the past two years.
Academic Integrity in Assessment
To foster academic integrity, pair anti-plagiarism tools with clear conduct expectations and authentic low-stakes assessments. When designing and teaching online courses, maintaining academic integrity is frequently top of mind. In many cases, faculty may opt to adopt third-party tools to monitor student work. Despite the prevalence of academic monitoring software in online courses, however, the most powerful tools for promoting academic integrity are introduced much earlier in the course build process.
Incorporating Multimedia in Your Course
Multimedia, which helps create an engaging and interactive online learning environment, has been shown to contribute to improved student performance (Cheng, Basu, & Goebel, 2009, p. 1). Though many online courses incorporate videos, they neglect to feature other forms of multimedia. And, while videos are a staple of multimedia use, there are other exciting options to consider: podcast episodes, graphics, and animations can all enhance course content, enriching the student experience. To maximize the benefits multimedia can provide, consider including these underutilized forms of multimedia in your course.
Taking Stock at the Midpoint of the Term
Halfway through the term isn't a great time to change around a bunch of materials or assignments in your course. However, it is a useful moment to evaluate how the course is going, realign to match the goals you set out at the beginning of the term, and determine what you may be able to tweak to make your course work more effectively for you and for your students. This piece suggests actions you can take at midterm to help shape the second half of the course.