EDTECH 512: Reading Summary # 11

Article 11: Smith, R. M. (2009, October 1). Conquering the content: A step-by-step guide to online course design (pp. 93-101). (Vol. 25). John Wiley & Sons.

In this article, Smith looks at the specifics of navigating, upload and making updates to future versions of an online course.  They state that making all components of a module available to students on one page is helpful so learners are not searching around the Learning Management System (LMS) to find out what tasks need to be completed.  Grouping the same components under an icon will also assist in easy navigation for the learners.  The author goes onto state that inevitably a designer will be making updates to their course based on feedback that highlights areas that did not work as expected.  They suggest keeping several documents to aid in capturing these updates in one location so at the end of the semester these updates can be done easily.  One idea is to keep a call log of phone calls from students and capture the topic and/or issue and the time spent with the student.  This will provide metrics for the end of semester to calculate the time spent on these issues and help to identify trends.  Other items to document are FAQ’s for your course and adding any new FAQs to this document for updating later, keep a list of issues and revisions, and also a list of suggestions students have provided.  If rolling out a new course it might also be helpful to solicit feedback from students about their experience to further refine the course.  Journaling or blogging about your teaching experiences will also help instructors to see their professional development and capture ideas in the moment to reflect upon later.  Documenting certain items such as concepts that were difficult, items that needed clarification such as discussion questions, assignment instructions and quiz questions will provide the designer with valuable feedback for revisions.  Preventing link rot is also crucial, and the author suggests keeping an inventory of links used in the course and their module location so these can easily be checked and updated as needed.  Finally, instructors need to understand the policies and processes specific for the LMS used at their institution.  To what extent they are able to have access to perform certain tasks, will be determined by the system administrators.

These suggestions are great practical ideas for ensuring instructors are efficient and use their time wisely when designing and updating courses.  Inevitably there will always be some issue that is raised in a course, so having the documentation set up from the start and easily accessible in one place will be of great benefit to make an instructors life more stress free.