A Boilerplate Course Model to Promote Quality

Imagine that you have a template that could assist you in course creation and allow you, as a developer, to focus on course content and learning activities that will effectively assist students in meeting the learning outcomes of the course. This could save you time one developing webpages and formatting them according to best practices.  Instead, you can focus developing assessments and learning activities to promote students easily meeting the courses learning outcomes.
The course model supplied offers a linear course design that implements a course information documents pack that meets over 20% (11) of the OSCQR standards. Using best practices this model template, when areas are completed, allows the course to meet over 40% of the requirements of the OSCQR rubric, or 21 of its standards.  This is true regardless of the subject matter used. A content free model cannot ensure that the course will meet all the standards, such as:

Standard 31: Course provides activities that emulate real world applications of the discipline, such as experiential learning, case studies, and problem-based activities.

Nevertheless, it can offer a template that ensures that several standards are met while saving the developer time and, if regularly adopted thought a school, offers a uniform environment for easier navigation and less cognitive load for students.   The numbering system also offers a convenient navigational system that is lacking in many conventional learning management systems

Doesn’t this interfere with academic freedom? 

No, of course not.  The course model offers a structure that conforms to best practices in instructional design.  Just as in logic in philosophy, there is a difference between content and form.  Thus Modus Ponens is a valid argument form regardless of the content. Moreover, the model is just that – it is a template to help in the design and development process. It may offer a linear format, however, this does not preclude that you can modify the model to meet pedagogical needs of the course. Provided these modifications do not run contrary to best practices in instructional design, there is no reason why the designer cannot add them.  For example, adding a course long discussion forum intended for students to share and evaluate external references related to course content is an excellent idea to build a community and promote information literacy.

Remember to work smarter and not harder.  There is very little reason to spend time working on recreating course structures, when instead you can spend the time working on developing assessments that map to student learning outcomes and great learning activities that promote student success.

You can download a Blackboard Package of the Course Model here so that you can upload it to any course that you plan to develop. You should note that some of the features are college specific, and will require further modification for use at a school other than SUNY Schenectady.

Creating Accessible PDFs with MS Office

You want accessible content because it increases student success. Luckily there is software that is common on most all campuses that can help. Microsoft Word, and most all MS Office Programs, have an Accessibility Checker that will allow you to create accessible documents. With both you can also convert your documents into PDFs so that they work better of online courses.

Here is how to create accessible PDFs in MS Word in 4 simple steps (and this can also apply to PowerPoint).

1.  Create a word document that is accessible with the “Accessibility Checker" 
2.  You simply have to save the document as a PDF.
   
   Saving a word document as an accessible PDF is easy.
   To save a file with the PDF file extension, either:
•  select “Export” and then choosing “Create PDF”, or
•  Select “Save as”, or “Save”, and changing the file type to PDF.
3.  Choose the “Options” button.
   
   In the “Option” pop-up window be sure to select the option, “Document structure tags for accessibility”.
   
   If you use more accessible fonts, such as Verdana, you should be fine. (You may consider selecting ISO 19005-1 Compliant PDF/A option if you have a non-standard font. It will ensure fonts can be read by a screen reader and not represented as an image (or bitmap). This option is preferable for creating documents that you would like to archive.)
4. Save the file as a PDF. 

If you follow these simple rules, you can ensure that your documents are accessible. You did this with only Microsoft Office using Word.

Help spread the word and increase the accessibility of content! Please feel free to share this information and end inaccessible documents.

Why Your Course Should Have a Linear Design

How to structure your online course can directly affect the success of your students and this structural difference is key to certain demographics.  In general, most college courses benefit from a linear structure because they are best received by their audience.  While some students may find a non-linear approach easier to find aspects of the course they are interested, as a designer, you should be concerned that a subset may miss needed components of the course.  Moreover, the structure may not relay any meaningful connections the content shares.

For example, imagine you are designing a course.  You create:

·       A folder for quizzes

·       A folder for tests

·       A folder with weekly readings

·       A folder with discussion boards

·       A folder with their current event assignments

·       A link to the publishers website for more material

Now, all the students have to do is read the 15 page syllabus to know what to do and find all the appropriate materials, and the course is done.

This design is easy for the faculty to create, but is not easy for the student to navigate. Determining what is due at any given point can be buried in a long syllabus and hard to find. The objectives are unclear or also difficult to find as well. Even if each folder has weekly headings, the students are required to constantly jump in and out of folders to navigate their learning in a meaningful way. To compound to this problem, there is no meaningful ordering or naming of the content to reveal how the content relates to each other.

Recipes include a step-by-step process precisely because they guide us though the process creating something. Shouldn’t course design be structured to guide the students through the process of learning?

The vast majority of college students taking online courses are not-self-motivated graduate students or post-docs, and several are new to the college learning experience. It is reasonable to assume that many of these students are not as highly disciplined. In schools with students new in online learning or educational technology or who have disabilities, e.g. certain community colleges have a rate as high as 1 in 4 who have meet this category, a linear model assists in their success. The lineal model also does not impeding other students’ progress. This is not true of non-linear models, as they often impede student success in all students who are not very self-regulated (McManus, 2000) and require extra guidance from the faculty over all for success with most students (Chen, 2002).

If you are designing courses for undergraduates, and particularly for students new to the college experience or that face specific learning obstacles, such as in community colleges, you should gravitate towards a simple linear course design.  It is not that a non-linear course design does not work.  You could achieve the same student success rate with a lot more work on your part as an instructor to overcome design issues that impede student understanding. However, isn’t adopting a design structure to do that work and contribute to student success what instructional design is all about?

References

Chen, S (2002) A cognitive model for non-linear learning in hypermedia programmes. British Journal of Educational Technology. 43(4) 449-460.

McManus, T (2000) Individualizing instruction in a web-based hypermedia learning environment: nonlinearity, advanced organizers, and self-regulated learners. Journal of Interactive Learning Research. 11(2) 219-251.

Announcements to Promote Student Success

Communication is key for student success.  This is particularly true for online courses where a sense of community is a key factor in student retention and achievement.

Found under the Course Tools in Blackboard, the Announcement tool is an excellent way of increasing communication with your students and to build a community of learning that is key for student success. 

To create an announcement, just click on the tool to view all the previous announcements and:

1. Select the Create Announcement button.
2. You will have to get the announcement or title or “subject”.  It is helpful to make these brief and to the point.
3. The content editor will allow you to add:
1. Text
2. Hyperlinks
3. Youtube videos
4. Photos, or
5. Anything else you can add create with the content editor
4.   The Web Announcement Options will give you the option to immediately publish or set a time for the announcement to be revealed.  You can also choose to email the students the announcement.
5. The course link can also link the announcement to a specific content page or assessment. 
6.  Don’t forget to hit ‘submit’.

Now you know how to use the announcement tool here are four tips to use it better:

1. Regardless of whether you teach a traditional, hybrid, or online course, using the Announcement tool is a create way to keep the students engaged in the course. It offers a tool for sending reminders that can keep the students focused and on track with the course.
2. The announcements offers you a better way to reach out to your students. The phone app pushes announcements to students’ phones to ensure they get the message.  Likewise, by choosing “Send a copy of this announcement immediately” you can also send the announcement to their college email as well. 
3. Minimally try to release an announcement once a week.  This helps keep their mind on the course and increases student engagement.  You might want to pick a specific time (such as Monday morning coffee hour) to be the regular time you send out a course announcement. 
4. You can create an announcement for each week all at once in the beginning of the semester, and set each announcement to be revealed on the appropriate week – using the Date Restriction feature.  This way you can set up a regular set of announcements to remind students of milestone events all at the beginning of the course.  This front-loading the course with announcements is a smart choice that can free up more of your time for teaching and less on administrivia.  You can then go about teaching knowing that you can add specific announcement messages when the need arises. 

By taking advantage of the Announcements Tool, you can foster a sense of community in your course, keep the students focused on their tasks, and contribute to your student’s success.   

The Delivery of Digital Content from Textbook Publishers Matters

Digital content supplied by publishers is convenient for faculty to adopt and studies show students support its inclusion in courses. It also affects a significant number of students. In the 2016-17 school year, 60% of students polled stated they accessed the publisher web content while taking college classes. While this contributes to the rising costs of textbooks, and increases the value of Open Educational Resources, there are times when the digital content is advantageous. For example, sometimes there are no appropriate OERs available for the content that is necessary and the digital content may be the only academically acceptable option. Likewise, if the school has mandated the use of the book, or the text is already needed for the course, the content is merely a free addition.

It may be clear that the predeveloped content makes it easier for instructors to offer online content. Further integrating the content with an LMS allows the content to seamlessly interact with the LMS and its gradebook. Nevertheless, this is not an issue about learning and pedagogy, but out of convenience. A simple pedagogical question arises with digital content from textbook publishers that is often not address.

Does integrating digital content from textbook publishers affect the performance of students in online literature and writing courses and do students prefer it?

In a pilot study, Wolf and Richardson (2018) investigated this very issue. They ran a pilot study on a class testing the performance and student preference of integrate textbook digital content. The study investigated variances student progress and preference of textbook publisher digital content between the modes of delivery. In general, publisher digital content can be accessed by either hyperlinking to the publisher’s website or integrating the content within the LMS. There are two ways to integrate the content and they are:

• Plug-ins. These suffer from required updates and poorer user experiences 
• Learning Tool Interoperability (LTI). This for is a direct link to the content is its stability makes it more preferable. 

The study use Pearson REVEL. The only integration option was to use a plug-in. Consequently, the study compared the differences of the plug-in with simply hyperlinking the material.

After setting the conditions to control the experiment, the pilot study revealed that:

·       Students performed better when the content was integrated with a plug in

·       Student rate of completion was also better when the content was integrated

·       Students also preferred the content integrated

There was also an unexpected result. There was a small percentage of helpdesk calls from students requesting assistance with the digital content. This has the added benefit of both:

• having students spend more cognitive time learning the material and less on navigation 
• Freeing up man-hours from the IT department 

While more study is required, the study is one of the first to confirm that evidence suggest that students will perform better when the have less impediments in navigation. Integrating publisher digital content, instead of sending them to a labyrinth of pages on the publisher’s website reduces some cognitive load and encourages students to spend more time in the learning environment. Consequently, it contributes to a large level of student success.

Reference

Wolf, D. & Richardson, A. (2018). Assessing the Pedagogical Effectiveness and Student Preference of Publisher Digital Content Presentation in Online Literature and Writing Instruction. In Proceedings of E-Learn: World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education (pp. 355-359). Las Vegas, NV, United States: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).

Objectives and Outcomes

When communicating with students, it is critical to discuss the learning objectives and outcomes of the course. These form milestones learners must achieve in order to complete the course successfully. The objectives define what students need to demonstrate to reveal their level of mastery of the topic at course completion. This is not just a matter of providing a proverbial roadmap for completing the course, but is also a key part in motivating students. In general, everyone likes to understand why they are performing tasks and communicating the objectives confers the meaning of the exercises that are being performed. Because of this, it is not surprising that students are more successful when they understand why they are learning content, of participating in particular academic exercises, and how the exercises connect to course outcomes. This offers a framework that makes the necessary work meaningful. This is particularly true with adult learners, who respond best when they know why the learning is required (Wlodkowski, 2008).

Naturally, all course content, learning activities, assessments and other interactions should be aligned with the learning objectives and course outcomes. There should be no busy work, but only meaningful assignments with clearly aligned outcomes. This is just best practice in course design. However, it is not just that the learning objectives are aligned to the assessments and activities. These relationships should be clearly explained to the learners to reveal their relevance to the objectives/outcomes (Knowles, 1984). This will better motivate students and offer guidance to the direction of the course.

Where to begin?

It is easy to get muddled up when presenting the learning objectives thoroughly.  Remember that the objectives should address what learners need to know when they complete the course, or within a module. The aligned activities and assessments will showcase how learners will achieve the objectives. Well written learning objectives have four parts that identify:

1. the learner,
2. the skill the learner must demonstrate,
3. the conditions the learner will demonstrate these skills, and
4. what the criteria are that will measure skill mastery. 

When presenting the material online for students, it is best to conform to medium for expressing them most effectively. In particular, use lists or bullet points to make understanding the objectives simple and visually compelling.  You might find a grid, rubric, concept map, or hierarchy may demonstrate how these objectives work together to accomplish the course goals. Once you have done this, you will want students to be able to access this information in:

• The course syllabus
• Online course information documents (an online deconstruction of the syllabus), and
• Each module’s beginning (the At-a-Glance pages).

Finally, using second person, (you/ your) offers a friendlier tense when communicating with students.  It personalized the statements and is a more affective motivator.

And now the hard part – let’s work on clearly stating the objectives and explaining how the assignments map to them.

References

Knowles, M. (1984). Andragogy in Action. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Wlodkowski, R. J. (2008) Enhancing Adult Motivation to Learn, 3rd edition. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Communicating a Feedback Policy

You uploaded your syllabus and it seems as if no student reads it. This is not a fault of students. People do not like reading pdfs on the web (Nielsen, 2003). This might be why nobody can find your notes about feedback in your uploaded 15 page pdf file with your feedback policy buried on page 11, sections 5.42. How can we remedy this? Offer the information in a preferable format.

Deconstruct the syllabus for the web. Harness the web and make the imparting information more effective in this medium. By breaking it down into a set of pages, such as a set of Course Information Documents, the information is presented in manageable chunks that are easier for students to access and review. The ‘findability’ of this information helps students more effectively orientate themselves to the course. Research reveals that courses where course information is easy to find have a direct impact on students’ perceptions, overall experience, and learning outcomes (Simunich, Robins, & Kelly, 2015)

Having a policy statement explaining how the instructor/student feedback occurs can reduce expectation gaps that create student frustration because they do not know what to expect. This can also reduce communication about feedback and allow students to focus more time on task. A concise policy statement can establish expectations and knowing how the course functions and the instructor’s expectations allows students to keep on track and prioritize their responsibilities (Ladyshwesky, 2013).

You will find that offering detailed guidelines that are easy to find defines course protocol and allows students to focus on learning the content instead of the process of the course. Students’ expectations about the frequency of the feedback, the response time for assignments, and the quality of interactions that are expected of them will help them focus on their success. This may also effectively reduce your workload as an instructor because you can spend more time on teaching and less time on reviewing course policies with the students.

References

Ladyshewsky, R. (2013). Instructor Presence in Online Courses and Student Satisfaction. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning, 7(1), 1-23.

Nielsen, J. (2003) Avoid PDF for On-Screen Reading. NN/g Nielsen Norman Group. Retrieved Juy 24, 2018 from https://www.nngroup.com/articles/avoid-pdf-for-on-screen-reading/

Simunich, B., Robins, D. B., & Kelly, V. (2015). The Impact of Findability on Student Motivation, Self-Efficacy, and Perceptions of Online Course Quality. American Journal of Distance Education, 29(3), 174-185.

Faculty Introductions and Building a Learning Community

Taking an online course can be intimidating and the environment can seem cold and impersonal. Students can feel that they are on their own navigating a morass of information where the solutions to their questions is difficult to find. Ironically, this also can apply to a traditional face-to-face course. However, using best practices in course design can help overcome this.

One way to breakdown the impersonal atmosphere of the Learning Management System is to remind students that you, a person, are there and that they can communicate with you. Adding a Faculty Introduction or Welcome page to the course is an excellent opportunity to make the learning environment less sterile and add a personal touch. Be sure to let the students know a little about yourself and your credentials to both demonstrate that you are indeed a person and a highly qualified instructor to better influence their acceptance of the course content (Dulaney, 2013).

 When you are creating an introduction, you should consider taking advantage of the medium and including multimedia. Simply adding an image of yourself can influence student perception of you (Russo & Campbell, 2004), and their retention of the material (Mayer, 2009), such as your expectations. By using video, instructors will increase students’ perception of connectedness with the course (Rose, 2009) and studies show that they will be 20% more positive about their interaction with the you and the content. This has been shown to have a direct impact on their success in the course (Jones, Naugle & Kolloff, 2008). You will also find that with currently technology, creating an introductory video is not the difficult.  (For a templated see the discussion about video introductions and your course, see: https://instructionaldesignsccc.blogspot.com/2018/03/video-introductions-and-your-course.html )

While you have a stand-alone page developed, it is wise to include the best ways for students to communicate with you.  In order to communicate high expectations, you first need to be able to communicate.  Including the best means to reach with you and the length they can expect in order to get a reply, affords insight for the students so that they understand what is expected. It also gives the students a location to consult if they forget the most effective ways to communicate with you, e.g. email or messenger.  The advantage is that this page can be a continue beacon that promotes a learning community and communication.

References

Dulaney, E. (2013). Does the Credibility of the Presenter Influence Acceptance of Content in the Classroom. American International Journal of Social Science, 2(4), 14-20.

Jones, P., Naugle, K., & Kolloff, M. (2008). Teacher presence: Using introductory videos in hybrid and online courses. Learning Solutions. Retrieved on March 26, 2014 from learningsolutionsmag.com

Mayer, R. E.  (2009) Multimedia Learning. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2^nd Ed. 

Rose, K. K. (2009) Student Perceptions of the Use of Instructor-Made Videos in Online and Face-to-Face Classes. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching. 5(3), Retrieved July 18, 2018 from http://jolt.merlot.org/vol5no3/rose_0909.htm

Russo, T. C., & Campbell, S. W. (2004). Perceptions of mediated presence in an asynchronous online course: Interplay of communication behaviors and medium. Distance Education, 25(2), 215-232.

Effective Communication & Instructional Design

Imaging that you entered a room and the instructor looks you the eye and sternly states:

“Beachtung! Sie müssen Nummer zwei Bleistift und setzen Sie sich hin"

If you did not understand German, you may be baffled. Meanwhile the instructor is frustrated that you are not following instructions and holding up the class. Did the instructor give you directions? Yes, but the instructor did not communicate them to you.

Now, image you are a new freshman student unfamiliar with online learning and you are taking a fully online course with directions referring to “threads” and “dropboxes” while burying needed information deep within nested folders that are difficult to find. The new environment may as well be a different language and this can impede student success.

It is clear that increased communication with students while the class is in session should promote student success.

 

When teaching there are several tools and heuristics to promote success by offering prompt feedback (Chickering & Gamson, 1987), such as:

• Logging on three or more times a week to make a presence,
• Using an Announcement tool to send communications to students (at least once a week) that can be pushed to their phones.
• Taking advantage of the course messaging and email features to keep regular contact and to check up on delinquent students.

However, did you know that there are features of course design that can either aid or inhibit communication?

Sometimes the design of course can systemically affect communications. Simply, adopting certain best practices in course design can aid communication with students and contribute to their success.

This resource will review several aspects of how employing best practices can help reduce communicative mishaps and streamline the process of students understanding their learning objectives and how to meet them with minimal technological or course design issues to impede there success. In particular, it will focus on better instructional design that can be applied before the class even begins. This resource will review:

• Communicating expectations effectively
• Faculty Introductions that develop an effective learning environment
• Explicit feedback policies
• At-a-Glance pages
• Communicating Learning Objectives, and
• Grading Rubrics

With the intent to communicate expectations better and improve student success.

Below is a e-book, that can be downloaded as a PDF, with each section a corresponding video accompanies each section.  Be sure to click on the interactive object below to be able to see it in full screen and have other features, such as text searches and navigation tools.

Helping Students Sign on to Blackboard

Often students, as well as faculty, are new to the online tools of a college and logging onto the learning management system (LMS) can be intimidating.  The latter a student enters the class often contributes to the student not having enough time to complete course assignments or even knowing about the assignments.  Needless to say, it is critical for student success to get the students familiar with the online learning environment quickly so that they can focus on learning.  Sharing the video below as well as the PDF (downloadable below too) either from an email attachment or course hand out during the first day of class procatively addresses this issue and should increase your student success rate.

How do we get started?

You want to use the My SCCC Portal. You can get there, and then to Blackboard, by performing the following:

1. Go to the SCCC website (http://sunysccc.edu)
2. Select (click on) the MySCCC button in the top right corner. (it is the orange one)
3. Sign in using your email username and password to the SCCC Portal. If you do not know these, please contact the SCCC Help Desk at: (518) 381-1487
4. Look to the left column and notice the “Launchpad”
5. Scroll down and select (click on) the “BlackBoard” link

That is it. You are now in Blackboard. You should take a look at the institution page and notice your courses are on the top right corner as well as on the “courses” tab.

Now that you are in Blackboard, you can get started on completing your course work and getting your degree.

Below is a PDF you can download or print out to distribute to your students.

Creating a Rubric in Blackboard

Blackboard offers an option in its tools to create a rubric that can be used for grading.  This rubric is integrated with the grade center and makes its use easy for both the faculty and students. Let’s look at how to create a rubric in Blackboard.

1. Select the Rubric option from the list on Course Tools on the menu.  From there you can either create a rubric or import one.  You will need to have a have a rubric made in Blackboard, (in a .ZIP formatted file) to import the file, so let’s start as if you do not have a rubric and want to create one.
2. Select the “Create Rubric” button.
3.  Give your Rubric a Name and then write a brief description.
4.  In the “Rubric Detail” section you can choose many different rubric types.  Let’s choose one for point ranges.
5.  You can also edit or create rows and columns to meet your needs.  Be sure to label the rows with criteria that is meaningful and easy for the students to understand. Then the level of achievement should likewise have meaningful descriptions. 
6. Now it is time to Describe each level of mastery for each descriptor (fill in the cells) This will help students better understand why they received their grade and assists them at getting better.
7. Hit “Submit” and you saved your rubric.

Now you are ready to go. You can use this rubric by selecting the “Add Rubric” button under the Grading section whenever editing an assessment.

Remember, rubrics help you as an instructor and contribute to student success, so let’s start using them more often.

Above: When creating an assessment, you can add any rubric you created with use of the "Add Rubric" button,