A Closer Look at Two Principles

Principles of Online Design, Florida Gulf Coast University, Faculty Development and Support

Principle:
1.3.2 Content should be sequenced and structured in a manner that enables learners to achieve the stated goals.

When teaching students face to face in the classroom, as many of us in this class have done, instructors tend to develop and hang on to lecture styles, materials, exercises and assessment tools that work well. Often though, we find that course elements that work well in the classroom don’t always translate into an effective online learning experience. It’s important to evaluate each element when taking a course online from the classroom, and to make sure it’s as interesting and interactive as possible. Instructors can bring some of the interactivity of face to face learning online by incorporating multimedia elements such as live-action movies, animations, simulations and games. Sending learners on a task, such as researching something online then reporting, or possibly being called on to report, can help keep them focused on the course material. As synchronous facilitators and asynchronous content authors, it’s important to remember that participants are always a click away from distraction, e.g., an Outlook new message pop-up that takes them away from class.

Second, I think it’s important to organize elements that suit attention span and interruption. Often referred to as “chunking” content, this design technique breaks content into topical units that can be covered by topic or sub-topic, often in a relatively short amount of time. In the classroom, instructors create chunks of content by selecting material that can be covered in the amount of time allocated, e.g., three one-hour sessions per week. Online, we need to use similar techniques, but expect shorter time allocations from learners. Again, we must be constantly evaluating and tailoring content to suit the medium and maximize efficacy of the learner experience.

By designing content in a way that’s goal oriented and that’s suited to frequent stops and starts, learners can get just the material they need or take all the material offered in a class, in a way that works in their real-life environment. Further, by taking such factors in to account when designing and developing content, we greatly increase the chances for learner success.

Principle:
1.4.2 Methods and procedures for evaluating student learning must be well articulated and directly linked to the stated learner objective

Although students often hope to skip it, there has to be some metric to measure student learning of the course material. By closely tying the tools and methods of evaluation to those used in instruction, we can increase the likelihood of student success. It’s important to advise participants at the outset of the learning process, whether synchronous, asynchronous or classroom, that there will be some form of assessment. In working with adult learners, I’ve found that this disclosure can lead to a fair amount of concern and test anxiety. Because test anxiety can distract students and hamper their ability to acquire knowledge of the material covered in the test, it’s good to prepare students for assessment with practice, review exercises and “low-stakes” or ungraded testing.

A favorite from classroom teaching is after providing several instructor-designed review opportunities, to ask students to review course objectives and to think of a review question they will put to their peers. The facilitator asks the first question of the group, and the first student to answer correctly then asks their question of the group, proceeding until all students have asked a question of the group. I’ve found this exercise translates well into a synchronous online learning environment and leads low-stakes feedback opportunities and greater confidence on the part of learners. Instructors get extra credit for incorporating students’ objective-based review questions (or variants thereof) into the actual assessment.