Using elements from the Rubric for Online Instruction developed by staff at CSU, Chico in Course Design

The Rubric for Online Instruction (ROI) defines set of characteristics associated with excellent online courses. The ROI can help us define what content and characteristics we want in our finished learning product, and can be especially effective when paired with continuous evaluation of course materials as elements are developed. It’s a sort of blueprint for design: if courses include these characteristics and the course elements designed to have these characteristics are evaluated and known to be effective, the course will most likely produce effective learning.

Some of the ROI categories are pretty straightforward, e.g., no one is surprised that excellent online courses have extensive information about being an online learner, links to campus resources, links to course-specific resources, contact details and a broad range of resources that support different learning abilities. These are elements of Category One - Learner Support and Resources in the ROI. What’s special here is the approach: it’s thorough, methodical and considered.

Looking at Category Two – Online Organization and Design, it emphasizes such elements as making the course organized and easy to navigate. Pages are visually consistent and that care is taken to make sure material is accessible to as many learners as possible. By designing the course carefully, and using such readily-available tools such as the reading grade level assessor in Microsoft Word and the closed caption feature in Adobe Captivate, we as content authors can significantly increase the accessibility of our content to learners.

I’m especially interested in Category Three – Instructional Design and Delivery. Upon reflection, I find attention to Category Three elements will be a significant improvement over the content I’ve developed and delivered in the past.

Going forward I plan place more emphasis on communication, including communication between students, instructors and content, as described in Part A. Encouraging students to interact and, where possible, collaborate, provides greater insight to solving the task at hand and, particularly in workplace instruction, helps colleagues establish and further relationships. Learners will address the assignment in class, and by fostering peer relationships, they will be more likely to collaborate and support one another outside the classroom. This provides opportunities for better learning in class as well as knowledge transfer and better customer experiences in the field or workplace.

Part C of the Instructional Design and Delivery category emphasizes inclusion of multiple visual, textual, kinesthetic and/or auditory activities. I believe these experiences can greatly enhance the learner’s attention, learning and confidence. After developing content for students to learn software applications that are used on the job and subject to both internal audit and audit by government regulatory agencies, I’ve found students are understandably reticent to experiment with new skills in such environments and thus welcome opportunities to work with simulations. The more opportunities we can create for safe practice, the better for learning. Also, the more varied learning experiences we can make available, the more learners we can reach.

Part E points to critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Current online authoring resources can help content authors to include these skills. Many tools such as Adobe Flash, Adobe Captivate, and TechSmith Camtasia include ways to add matching exercises, multiple choice and true false questions to the course content that can challenge students think critically about the course material and to solve problems they may encounter in the field or in the office. Such objects are traditionally used in skills assessment, but they can also be useful when presenting information to students by allowing them to interact with the content and challenging them to actively work with the material being presented.

By working developing courses with consistent and constant evaluation, and ensuring that the characteristics outlined in the Rubric for Online Instruction are met, it seems the likelihood of good learner outcome is much higher than content developed without such a resource.