what makes a good course

What Makes a Good Online Course?

• Natural Learning Content. Reading a generic textbook and answering fill-in-the-blank questions isn’t a natural way to...
• Student-Friendly Pacing. Good online classes know how to pace the assignments so that students are neither bored nor...
• Sense of Community. The best online classes are created with community in mind. Students are...

Full Answer

What are the elements of a good course?

They sat there is silence for a few minutes looking confusedly at their little index cards. When they finally got through the exercise, they clearly identified some important elements of a good course, including organization, level-appropriateness, fair and relevant assessments, and engaging activities.

Why is choosing the right course for you important?

Because the secret to happiness is being able to love whatever it is you do in life. And what does this all have to do with choosing the right course for you? It all starts here. Find the right course, at the right university or college, and you will be inspired to succeed. So how do you make the right choice?

What makes a good online course?

Instead, good courses include carefully selected technologies that are reliable and fully supported. This helps students avoid the panic that comes from encountering a required program that just won’t run or a video that just won’t load.

What makes a good education course design?

It’s clear that designers of the best courses think outside the box. They avoid giving the students the same bland experiences week after week and surprise them with real opportunities to develop their thinking and grow as a learner.

What makes a course a good course?

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.

What is a successful course?

Success Course Definition. Success courses are designed to help undergraduate students make successful transitions from a previous level of education, or experience (e.g., the military), into the University, from undeclared status into a major, and/or from undergraduate studies to graduate studies or careers.

What makes a college course successful?

Being approachable to students, expressing excitement for the course content, making time to discuss students' concerns, and exhibiting positivity towards their class performance are important elements of responsibility.

What should you look for when choosing a course?

Choosing a university course: five academic factors to considerCourse content. ... Academic reputation. ... The quality of the academic facilities. ... League table rankings. ... The type of work involved.

How do you make a course successful?

Share this articlePick the perfect course topic.Ensure your course idea has high market demand.Create Magnetic and Compelling Learning Outcomes.Select and Gather your Course Content.Structure Your Modules and Course Plan.Determine the most engaging and effective delivery methods for each lesson.More items...•

How do you develop a course?

To design an effective course, you need to:Consider timing and logistics.Recognize who your students are.Identify the situational constraints.Articulate your learning objectives.Identify potential assessments.Identify appropriate instructional strategies.Plan your course content and schedule.

What is the key to academic success?

Motivation is the energy to study, achieve, and maintain a positive attitude and behaviors over time. Highly motivated students view their effort and ability as the most important factors of success. Remind yourself that your success today will help you to be more successful tomorrow.

What are the key factors for making an online course effective?

Previous PPIC research has identified five key factors to help ensure student success in online programs:Use a systems approach to course design. ... Provide professional development. ... Set student expectations. ... Create community. ... Take advantage of the online environment.

What drives academic success?

Motivation is key to school success. Just as the actor asks a director, "What is my motivation, for this scene?," the child turns to teachers, parents, and peers to discover the "why" of learning. Motivation is often defined as a need or drive that energizes behavior toward a goal.

Why do you choose this course?

Focus on positive reasons Emphasize that you were the one who made the final decision to enroll in the course. While you may discuss others advised you on the choice, your answer showcases your decision-making skills. Try to avoid mentioning that you enrolled in the course because of potential financial benefits.

Why is it important to choose the right course?

In a skill seekers' journey, it is very important to enable career discovery to help choose skill seekers the right course which could enhance their job prospects. Once you have chosen the right course, it is equally important to connect to the best training companies which offer quality.

What factors affecting students in choosing their college course?

college reputation, educational facilities, cost, availability of financial aid, employment opportunities, advertising are institutional factors that influence students' college choice decision.

Why is online learning important?

As much as possible, good online classes provide the opportunity for students to make up their own minds and take responsibility for their own learning. Some of the best courses allow students to create their own projects or focus on an element of the topic that they particularly enjoy.

Is it okay to overload a course?

Sometimes, overloading a course with too many “extras” can be confusing to students. But, it’s still helpful to give students ways to learn more outside of the prescribed curriculum if they choose to do so. Good online courses provide supplemental ways for students to keep learning but differentiate that from the core content so that students aren’t overwhelmed.

Is there a lot of boring online classes?

Updated February 06, 2019. Let’s face it: there are a lot of low-quality, low-learning, boring online classes out there. But, there are also some spectacular online courses that engage students and help them learn in ways that aren’t always possible in a ​ traditional classroom.

Is online class good?

It’s sometimes tempting to overload a course with flashy tech elements or to have students sign up for dozens of outside services. But, good online classes avoid this temptation. Instead, good courses include carefully selected technologies that are reliable and fully supported. This helps students avoid the panic that comes from encountering a required program that just won’t run or a video that just won’t load.

1. Integrate video creation and sharing with your LMS

One of the keys to training faculty to create quality online course videos is to start with a video platform that is easy to use.

2. Create videos for online courses

With the right strategies, instructors can interact with online students, pay attention to their questions, and give personalized feedback, all while measuring participation and comprehension.

3. Encourage faculty to create accessible course materials

In their fourth year with an accessibility awareness committee, the University of South Carolina Upstate had a significant challenge – to make sure all of the user community is educated about the need for captions, and to encourage faculty to generate them when they create recordings.

4. Get data to share effective online teaching practices

Winner of an Aspen Prize Rising Star Award based on student engagement, retention, and performance, administrators at Odessa College carefully monitor success rates, but not just of students. They monitor success rates of faculty as well.

5. Engage the reluctant online learner

After ten years of teaching online and face-to-face classes, Tracie Lee hit a trifecta of hurdles – teaching online Introductory Business Statistics.

6. Encourage reluctant faculty to create quality course videos

Training faculty to create quality online courses can be challenging. It can involve overcoming barriers in technology, workflow, student-instructor relationships, and mindset. Here are some tactics from other colleges on how they encourage faculty to begin creating course videos.

7. Create mobile videos for effective, in-the-moment instruction

Instructors at Aims Community College needed a way to create valuable, in-the-moment video lessons for students, beyond traditional lecture capture. After adopting software-based TechSmith Knowmia, faculty jumped at the chance to create engaging video lessons from any location, at any time.

What makes an online course good?

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.

What is accounting course?

In an accounting course, students could analyze the financial statements of a company they’re interested in rather than one selected by the instructor. Such flexibility not only accommodates students’ backgrounds and interests, it provides space for students to make the course their own.

What does "online course" mean?

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.

Why is online learning important?

A good online course promotes student agency. It gives students autonomy to enable opportunities for relevant and meaningful learning. Such a course redistributes power - to the extent that is possible - in the classroom. Again, this may take many forms in the online classroom.

What is creative writing class?

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.

What are the interactions between students and professors?

Interactions between professor and students may involve students receiving personalized feedback, support and guidance. Interactions among students may include such things as debating various issues or collaborating with peers to solve a problem.

Is online teaching the primary mode of education?

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.

Can a first year undergraduate comment on their learning experience?

A first-year undergraduate wouldn ’t know whether the instructor is knowledgeable or not. That’s a question that is better suited to a peer evaluation. However, students can certainly comment on their learning experience within the context of a course.

Can students provide feedback on a course?

Dr. Gravestock: Yes and no. There are definitely certain things that students can provide feedback on, but there are also things that students are not necessarily in a position to provide feedback on. An example of the latter is a question that appears on most course evaluations, asking students to comment on the instructor’s knowledge ...

Is it helpful to teach faculty about research?

Educating faculty about the research as well is really helpful. There have been 40 years of study on course evaluations and the research shows that students can provide effective feedback on course evaluations and that it is a useful measure of teaching effectiveness when they are well-developed and validated.

Graphic Design

Here’s some truth for you: humans are visual creatures! We “eat” with our eyes first, we fall in love with our eyes first, and we learn with our eyes first. It’s because of this that graphic design is so important when designing good eLearning!

User Interface Design

When designing an eLearning course, how often do you think about the learner’s experience? And, when I say, “learner’s experience,” I’m not referring to the learning content! I’m talking about the literal experience learners have while using your course.

Visual Communications

Do you know the difference between graphic design and visual communications? If not, you might be missing a huge opportunity to enhance the presentation of your learning content!

Instructional Design

When you’re new to eLearning, the concept of creating interactive content might be as simple as the learner clicking to reveal some learning content.

How to improve training?

Allow sufficient time to hire the right people. Ensure the training materials cover everything that needs to be taught and do not include anything that does not. Define what acceptable quality is and how it will be measured.

How to train a new employee?

There are several key lessons learned from our training experiences that demonstrate how the same task can be trained more efficiently. The most important factors we discovered were: 1 Plan a training program properly 2 Allow sufficient time to hire the right people 3 Ensure the training materials cover everything that needs to be taught and do not include anything that does not 4 Define what acceptable quality is and how it will be measured 5 Show that the goals are achievable and what must be demonstrated in terms of consistency to show that training is complete and successful 6 Set clear targets 7 Use the best person to deliver the training – their knowledge and enthusiasm will be the example that the trainees follow 8 Support and mentoring are an essential aspect of training and needs to be included in the training plan 9 Finally, implement what you learn from previous experiences

How can managers determine how well people perform in their role?

By using quality measures, managers can determine how well people perform in their role – but these measures don’t necessarily demonstrate how successful their training was. A common perception is that quality improves with experience.