The Perfect Online Course: Best Practices for Designing and Teaching was edited under the assumption that a perfect online course can be delivered following different instructional methods and models for design and for instruction, and by implementing different teaching or instructional strategies.
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May 01, 2009 · The Perfect Online Course: Best Practices for Designing and Teaching was edited under the assumption that a perfect online course can be delivered following different instructional methods and...
Video: The Perfect Online Course: By Dr. Michael Simonson. ... Section 6: Best Practices in Course Design for Distance Education. One key to effective distance education is correct instructional design, a systematic process that applies research- based principles to educational practice. If the design is effective, instruction will also be ...
Request PDF | THE PERFECT ONLINE COURSE: Best Practices for Designing and Teaching | The growth of online learning all over the world arise new …
A volume in Perspectives in Instructional Technology and Distance Education Series Editors: Charles Schlosser and Michael Simonson Nova Southeastern University …
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.
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.
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.
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.
Instructional design is considered the intellectual technique of the professional who is responsible for appropriate application of technology to the teaching and learning process.
Traditionally, there are four approaches for the instructional design of courses that are to be delivered asynchronously using the World Wide Web. The four approaches are not entirely new. Two are based directly on the individualized instruction movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The four models are:
Some claim that systematic planning is not important or even needed when learner-centered instruction is developed. In spite of claims, the evidence remains clear that the key to effective instruction is the concept of design, defined by Seels and Richey (1994) as: “the process of specifying conditions for learning.
Line-of-sight communication, as signal fires would require, has a long history. Most broadcast television applications require line of sight; even communications satellites orbiting in the Clarke Belt thousands of miles above the equator are “in sight” of the uplinks and downlinks on Earth.
Certainly, considerable communication in distance education does not involve face-to-face instruction. The heart of distance education is the concept of separation of teacher and learner. Many say the meeting of students with teachers will soon be a relic of the past, like signal fires.
Because of an emphasis on planning and revising, well-designed instruction is repeatable. This means that the instruction can be applied again in another class. For example, instruction designed for a televised, multisite class can be used again with a new group of students at different sites.
The challenge of education is to match the content of the subject to the needs of the learners. Broadly stated goals are a helpful starting place for the instructor. The instructor must decide what is appropriate for a group of students and for the individuals within that group. Each instructor constantly must face the challenge of adapting instruction to the student who is expected to learn it. Although content is important, instructors should remember that their focus is on the students. This is critical when establishing goals for any course.
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.
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.
Instructors can incorporate authentic activities that connect real-world relevance and content knowledge. Authentic activities can range from examining case studies to creating problem-based scenarios in which the students research the problem and create solutions or address gaps within the problem.
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.
The overview page adds to the course’s structure, and can help keep students engaged in the learning process and increase academic integrity.
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.
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.
A good online course is interactive. Courses are much more than placeholders for students to access information. A good online course provides information such as readings or lecture videos, but also involves interactions between professor and students and between students and students. Interactions between professor and students may involve ...
A good online course is engaging and challenging. It invites students to participate, motivates them to contribute and captures their interest and attention. It capitalizes on the joy of learning and challenges students to enhance their skills, abilities and knowledge. A good online course is cognitively challenging.
With very few exceptions, online teaching and learning will be the primary mode of education for the majority of higher education students in many jurisdictions this fall as concerns about COVID-19 extend into the new school year.
The problems with media comparison studies — that is, those that compare outcomes between one medium, such as face-to-face, to another medium, such as online — are such that many researchers advocate against them. How can students who enrol in online courses in the fall know they are receiving a good educational ...
It means audiovisual materials that don’t stereotype, shame or degrade people. It may mean that open educational resources are prioritized over expensive textbooks. A good online course is interactive. Courses are much more than placeholders for students to access information.
In a creative writing class, students may write a short story, receive feedback, revise it and then write a different story. In a computer programming class, they may write a block of code, test it and then use it in a larger program that they wrote.
In a computer programming class, they may write a block of code, test it and then use it in a larger program that they wrote. In an econometrics class, they might examine relationships between different variables, explain the meaning of their findings and then be asked to apply those methods in novel situations.
Course planning is a continual process, as illustrated by the diagram below. Each of the steps is necessarily undertaken with the others in mind, and each will necessarily undergo revision each time you teach a particular course. As you plan and revise courses, remember the importance of teaching core concepts and critical-thinking skills.
When you define the course goals, focus on student learning. One way to formulate these goals is to determine what students should be learning in terms of content, cognitive development, and personal development. Be as specific as you can and make sure that the goals define learning in ways that can be measured.
Instructors often plan initially to teach more material than they can cover in the allotted time. Determine the structure of the course; arrange the topics in a logical order. Developing a rationale that guides the structure of the course can help you explain the material more clearly to the students.
Teach students problem-solving and critical-thinking skills. Demonstrate how chemistry is used in other fields and in everyday situations. Teach students the beauty of chemistry. Determine course content. Select the major topics and determine the order in which you will teach them. Select the main topics to be covered.