Time management in POD

Florida Gulf Coast University’s Principles of Online Design provides useful information on the design of courses for an eLearning environment, and I was especially interested in the one in the “Course Management” section:

The instructor should allocate adequate time to develop and deliver an online course.

Because there is only one principle listed under this topic, I will go into two of the practices listed under it in greater detail.

If at all possible, complete the design and development of an online course prior to its delivery. Module development is time-consuming.

I wholeheartedly agree with this advice, and I feel that it is even more important to the novice online instructor to have module development completely out of the way before starting the course. Until the instructor gets some experience with it, the time consumed by interacting with students during the course will probably exceed the estimated time. It would also help to have another, more experienced instructor team up with the newbie to share best practices for being efficient and organized with this.

Student time commitments may increase in online coursed since the responsibility for learning shifts from being teacher-centered to student-centered.

This concepts corresponds closely to category 1 on CSU Chico’s Rubric for Online Instruction. In both, clarity of expectations is of great importance. Learners need to be made aware of the shift in responsibility and prepare for it. In any case, communication is the key here.