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Format
Instructor Presence in Online Courses
Consistent and meaningful instructor presence is one of the most important drivers of student success and satisfaction in online courses (Roddy et al., 2017). However, establishing instructor presence online can be challenging. In fact, studies have shown that many online students feel their instructors are largely invisible (Tichavsky et al., 2015).
Updating Your Syllabus
Over time, you may want to make changes to the syllabus of a course. The syllabus documents are saved in the “Files” area (1) of the course. To preserve the integrity of the document, the Word document is located in the “Instructor Only” folder (3) and the PDF is found in the “Documents” folder (2) so it is visible to students.
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.
Developing Instructional Materials
Once you have defined the learning objectives for your course, you can begin to develop assessments to ensure students achieve those objectives. Once you have created assessments, you can begin to develop materials to ensure students succeed on those assessments. This backward design process—which moves from objectives to assessments and finally to materials—is known as learning-centered instruction, and it directs every course task toward the mastery of certain skills and competencies. This blog focuses on the third stage of this process, the development of high-quality instructional materials, beginning with the idea that robust and engaging online courses contain a mix of created and curated content. Below you will find guidelines for creating and curating instructional materials to help you achieve the optimal balance for your course.
Accessible Use of Color
Some students (older learners, learners with partial sight, learners with colorblindness, and learners using monochrome or text-only displays) have difficulty perceiving color. To ensure that course content is perceivable to all learners, you should follow guidelines for color use that have been established by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the organization responsible for international standards of web accessibility, including the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Three essential WCAG requirements, known as success criteria, are summarized below.
Accessible Use of Text
Students with diverse cognitive, linguistic, and academic abilities benefit from accessible text. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) establish numerous requirements (known as success criteria) to ensure that text is perceivable, operable, and understandable to all users. This guide synthesizes the essential criteria related to text accessibility. Following these guidelines when creating course content, such as documents, slides, and pages in the LMS, will help you eliminate potential barriers for your learners.
Engagement Series: Introduction
There are many components to consider when developing an online course; a key framework to inform course development is student engagement. The Glossary of Education Reform defines student engagement as “the degree of attention, curiosity, interest, optimism, and passion that students show when they are learning or being taught, which extends to the level of motivation they have to learn and progress in their education” (Great Schools Partnership, 2016, para. 1). Developing and evaluating course content through the lens of engagement can help instructors create an environment that is conducive to learning and mastery of course outcomes.
Best Practices for Screencast
Do you want to deliver presentations, share tutorials, or teach complex applications in your online course? If so, creating screencasts may be a great option for you. This piece defines what a screencast is, identifies important development considerations and common instructional use cases, and highlights best practices for creating screencasts for your online course.