Tips for Developing High Quality Online Courses
Kara Heichelbech is the Assistant Director at Indiana Online, Indiana’s largest online supplemental program.
In March, and seemingly overnight, teachers added instructional designer to their list of job responsibilities; however, it is safe to say that many had little to no training regarding online instructional design in their teacher prep programs. Now that we are a year removed and learning what we didn’t know, it is time to reflect on the process for developing quality online learning. A few questions to consider:
What does quality online content look like?
How does one create engaging lessons and build relationships with students in a virtual setting?
How much time should be spent to develop a lesson, a unit, a course?
Is it better to build the curriculum or buy it?
Indiana Online has been creating online content for over 15 years. Serving more than 25,000 students each year, we have learned a lesson or two on what works and what should be avoided. All of our courses are developed following the Quality Matters K-12 Course Design Rubric, as well as utilizing the National Standards for Quality Online Courses. Both of these documents provide great material to assist in developing quality online content. But what does that look like?
We know that student engagement, relationships, and quality teachers lead to success in the classroom. It is no surprise that those criteria are needed in an online environment, too. Quality lessons, whether face-to-face or online, need to be grounded in the assessment tied to and meeting the student learning objective. I share with teachers that every online lesson needs five components, and each component lends to building a relationship with students:
Introduction: Introduce the lesson/chapter/unit and share expectations and intentions for learning. I like to use this to answer the “why” of the lesson and let students know upfront what they are learning and what my expectations are for the lesson.
Content Delivery: Expose the students to the content via multiple modalities (text, audio, video, etc.). I encourage teachers to create their own videos to make a personal connection to students.
Exploration of Content: Engage students with the content using clear, simple directions for all activities. Do not be afraid to take risks - go way beyond a digital worksheet! Exploring content activities is also a great way to create community with online learners and is a great time for teachers to provide feedback and interventions.
Check for Understanding: Students demonstrate their learning. Online assessments have to be tied to the learning objective and have to go beyond multiple choice or true false questions. If students can Google the answer, the assessment needs to be rethought. Informal checks for understanding can be so telling of student learning, and providing quality feedback can really deepen student learning and mastery of content.
Conclusion: Wrap up the lesson/chapter/unit. The conclusion is a great place for students to self-reflect on their learning and to provide feedback to the teacher on the design of the lesson/chapter/unit. Did the learning meet the objective?
Reviewing these components can seem overwhelming when designing for online content, especially if proper training is missing. One misconception is that transitioning a face-to-face lesson to an online lesson is quick and easy when in fact, it takes months to design quality content for learning. Laura Garmire, Instructional Design and Curriculum Manager for Indiana Online, shares it takes about 6-9 months to create a one semester, high-quality course. She breaks down the 6 - 9 month timeline for creating quality courses as:
1 month to create a mapping document to plan out the course to ensure all standards are met;
4-6 months to create quality content and assessments that are truly engaging and go above “watch this video, complete this worksheet” activities;
1 month to review the designed course to ensure all components are present and to view the course from both the student and teacher lens.
All of this work is certainly not a one person task! Laura and her team (and it takes a team!) work with content experts to build every aspect of the course, from objectives, interactives (using platforms such as H5P or Articulate), and videos to quality assessments tied to the learning objectives. A strong partnership between the content expert and the design team ensures a quality course is built. One of our content experts recently shared, "I have felt very supported since I started this project and so appreciate it! I can tell that you all care a lot about this program and want the very best for the students, which in turn makes my creation of this course that much more meaningful!"
Building content is a group effort that takes a lot of time and resources; therefore, for many schools it can make sense to buy some aspects of the curriculum, especially if a quality component already exists. Buying content allows for resources to be used to build deeper, higher-quality content in another area. As the Digital Learning Collaborative (DLC) shared in their Build vs Buy webinar, institutions should build AND buy. A thorough evaluation of what exists and what can fit into the needs of the institution can free up time, resources and talent to build higher-quality content somewhere else. While Indiana Online prides itself on our home grown content, we also recognize that there is quality content out there for purchase, and we use it to fill in our gaps or buy us time to develop a better quality course later on down the road.
Starting small by developing a high-quality eLearning lesson can build confidence when first starting out. Unfortunately, the pandemic forced many of us to expand beyond a small eLearning lesson into a full-blown virtual learning course. Teachers did great with what knowledge they had at the time, but now is the time to learn in order to review, revamp and redesign.