how to design a distance learning course

How to Create Distance Learning Courses

1. Develop your curriculum. Develop your curriculum. The options for distance learning curriculum are limitless and, in...
2. Create accountability. Create accountability. Accountability is even more important in distance learning courses than it...
3. Create a system for regular interaction with students. Create a system for regular...

Full Answer

How do you create a distance learning course?

 · And this, not to mention the design of the new distance learning course that she wishes to develop next year! FOUR CHALLENGES TO MEET IN THE DESIGN OF DISTANCE LESSONS. The challenge of student autonomy. Taking a course partially or entirely from a distance requires a lot of autonomy on the part of the students. It is therefore important to ...

How to design an online course?

 · A guide for educators on creating distance and online design courses. This guide has been created to support design educators preparing to (re)create courses for new cohorts of students over the coming months. It offers guidance, suggestions and ideas around common elements found in distance courses, case studies and research. This current version (v0.9) is…

What are the options for Distance Learning curriculum?

In chapter 5 the authors discuss an instructional design model and the principles of instructional design systems and stress the need for planning in distance education course delivery. The chapter begins with discussion of systems but quickly moves into the details of planning a course. Please scan the entire chapter, but consider it an ...

What is course design and mapping?

Developing an online course is labor intensive and can be difficult to do concurrently with teaching the course. Create a content outline, chunking the content into lessons. View an example. Write learning objectives for each lesson. Learning objectives provide specifications for assessment and guide the development of instructional strategies.

Can you teach an online course the first time?

 · Choose main topics. Preview current textbooks and updated literature for a unique course topic. Find out if there is consensus for the necessary topics by reviewing former course syllabi and through ongoing dialog with colleagues. Adjust your list to reflect course goals and student characteristics.

What is the purpose of learning objectives?

 · Strategy 1: Involve the Learner. A common perception is that online courses require students to just read or view videos, and then regurgitate the information in an essay or simple discussion post. However, this is false because there are numerous activities that fully engage online students.

Is online learning an alternative to traditional learning?

 · 1. Research how others have taught similar courses. There is nothing wrong with borrowing or remixing material that other teachers have used for similar courses. You can save yourself a lot of time and maximize the quality of your content by reading other curriculums and adapting it to your class.

What is a rubric in a course?

But we've all been there before. Here's what you do: 1: ILT Estimate: Go back to your SME and have them estimate how long an instructor led course length would be to teach the same material, then come back and use our calculator. 2: Quick Script Estimate: Take the information you have and get it into text format.

What is the ABCD method?

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About this website

10 Steps To Creating A Wildly Successful Online Course

Sarah Cordiner . Sarah Cordiner is an education expert, author, speaker, trainer, award-winning online course creator and CEO of Main Training. With 11 years in business in the education industry and over 5,000 students in 121 countries – Sarah encapsulates a mesmerizing marriage of education and entrepreneurship as the EDUpreneur’s internationally acclaimed leader in ‘profitably ...

18 Amazing Outline Templates to use in Course Design [3 ... - Learnworlds

3 Orientation Courses. An orientation course provides an overview of all the courses you offer. If you are offering many courses in your Academy, create an orientation course to build student engagement and interest with the course contents and let them get acquainted with the goals of your Academy.

Best Practices for Online Course Design – CourseArc

Instructional designers have many tools to make their courses more entertaining and engaging, like video, audio, image editing, interactivity, and more. However, instead of randomly creating courses using any/all of these tools, or packing new tools into a module just because they seem trendy or expected,

Introduction

You may have a feeling by now, (especially after your closer look at MOOC’s,) that there are a variety of opinions about the way distance education should be delivered or who it should be delivered to or under what circumstances. This chapter does not attempt to provide us with THE answer.

Readings

Chapter 5 - Teaching and learning at a distance, "Instructional Design for Distance Education"

Reading Response (RR) Assignment 5.1

Chapter 5, page 172 of your text, provides a list of rules. Rule #11 in the “12 golden rules” for the use of technology in education states “Teamwork is essential.

Reading Response (RR) Assignment 5.2

QUESTIONS: 1. What is the case study report about? (Written as if you were telling a friend about a movie you just saw. You wouldn’t retell the entire movie and you wouldn’t go into too much detail to spoil it for them. When you were finished with your telling, they would have a good idea of the story in the movie.)

Assignment 5.3

5.3 – During the remaining lessons, you will be looking at some of the processes involved in implementing a distance education program and applying them to your own project of creating a distance learning lesson/module that meets the goals of an organization (can be K-12, Higher Ed, business, non-profit, etc.) and solves a current instructional need that is not being met (this can be one that applies to your own profession or an idea you have based on a real-world example.) To begin thinking about your process, please include in your lesson 5 submission an informal statement on a Word doc that contains an instructional need that is not currently being met and your idea for a lesson/module delivered via distance learning.

Scoring Rubric for Assignment 5.3

5 - Course idea includes a brief description of a real-world instructional problem that you think a distance learning approach would help to solve.

Submitting Your Assignments

When you have completed all three assignments (5.1, 5.2 & 5.3) please submit them all at the same time in a single document. At the top of your document you should have the lesson name, and underneath that should be your name, email address, and the date.

Online Course Defined

An online course is one in which more than 50 percent of its content is delivered online. It typically consists of:

First: Plan Your Course on Paper

Start early — at least six months in advance. Set interim deadlines for yourself for completion of each task. Developing an online course is labor intensive and can be difficult to do concurrently with teaching the course.

Second: Produce or Obtain the Course Content

Developing online content is the most time-consuming aspect of designing an online course. Plan to carve out plenty of time to do this.

Third: Build Canvas Components

After you have planned the course and developed all the course materials, you are ready to build the course in Canvas. You can also visit the Canvas Support page for more information.

Fourth: Pilot the Course

Facilitate the course. Building a well-structured online course is only part of the equation for successful online teaching; facilitating is the other part of the equation. Facilitation includes creating a social presence and providing regular, timely feedback. For tips refer to Course Management and Communication.

How We Can Help

Schedule a time to meet with an instructional designer to talk about your course.

Is planning a course fluid?

Remember that planning a course is a fluid process. The diagram shows this below. Each step is made with the other steps in mind and, likewise, each step will be refined every time you teach the course.

What should the exam focus on?

For example, if a course goal is to sharpen problem-solving skills, then the exam should focus on a question that uses problem-solving, not mainly recalling facts. Similarly, both homework and class activities prior to the exam should involve questions and exercises that deal with problem-solving skills.

How to reflect on course design?

A few ways to reflect upon course designs is through student feedback and by keeping a design journal of things that come up during a semester. Finally, there are course design rubrics, such as from Quality Matters, which can assess course design according to research-based rubrics.

Do online courses require students to read videos?

A common perception is that online courses require students to just read or view videos, and then regurgitate the information in an essay or simple discussion post. However, this is false because there are numerous activities that fully engage online students.

What is inquiry based learning?

Instructors also can use inquiry-based learning (IBL), which requires students to investigate questions they have concerning the content. One strategy that online instructors can implement to establish IBL is through the implementation of Know, Want to Know, and Learned (KWL) charts.

What is microlearning in education?

Microlearning involves presenting content through mediated micro levels so students are exposed to small learning units on short-term assignments. Microlearning is based on H.A. Simon’s 1974 research that outlines the effectiveness of creating chunks of learning experiences that the short-term memory can retain.

Why do instructors use reflective strategies?

There are several strategies that instructors can use to practice reflective strategies in order to improve the learning environment for students. Successful instructional course design needs a performance evaluation process that has flexible guidelines.

What are the limitations of online learning?

One of the most significant limitations of online learning is that students can’t interact with you or each other as directly. If you don’t include an interactive aspect of the course, the education students are receiving will be little better than if they simply bought a textbook and read it on their own.

Why should each unit include some kind of interactive assignment?

Each unit should include some kind of interactive assignment so that students are consistently engaged. This type of assignment may be more difficult for math or science course. However, you can use message boards to encourage students to explain how they worked out certain problems or applied formulas.

Why do people prefer online classes?

Many prefer online courses because of the convenience while others note challenges for interactive and engaged learning. Before you start designing your course, it’s important to recognize the differences that will make lesson plans originally designed for an in-person class an imperfect fit for your online class.

How to save yourself time in a class?

There is nothing wrong with borrowing or remixing material that other teachers have used for similar courses. You can save yourself a lot of time and maximize the quality of your content by reading other curriculums and adapting it to your class.

How long does it take to develop an eLearning course?

But development of a 1-hour elearning course can range between 49 hours for the low end of the range of a “basic” course to 716 hours for the high end of the range of an “advanced” course.

What is the rule of thumb for instructional design?

Ideally, the inclusion of interactivity, and how much, should be instructional design decisions. You want to think about how to best ensure that the material engages viewers so learning transfer can happen.

How many hours is 1 minute of elearning?

For example, on average, one minute of a Level 2 program will require 197 minutes (or just over 3.25 hours) of development time.

Can you teach an online course the first time?

Relax! You won’t be creating the perfect online course, at least not the first time you teach it. It takes teaching an online course a few semesters to improve and enhance it. Continue to experiment with new approaches, refining your teaching according to your learning objectives and the feedback of your students.

What is the purpose of learning objectives?

Creating Learning Objectives. It is essential to build measurable and clear objectives that outline what is expected of the learner. These objectives will make it easy to align the rest of your course and will serve to communicate learning expectations to students.

Is online learning an alternative to traditional learning?

Online education is not an “alternative” to traditional classroom learning.

What is a rubric in a course?

A rubric is a coherent set of criteria for students’ work that includes descriptions of levels of performance quality on the criteria. The main purpose of rubrics is to assess performances (Brookhart, 2013). Explore four types of rubrics that you might use to assess assignments in your course.

What is the ABCD method?

ABCD Method – An easy framework for creating learning objectives is the A.B.C.D. method. This stands for Audience, Behavior, Condition and Degree. Learning objectives that contain each of these elements will clearly outline the learning that is to be achieved after completing each module.