Develop One Course Module
You've already formed the foundation on which to build your course when you wrote your learning objectives, activities, and assessments, so the hard part is done! All you have to do is flesh out the activities and assessments you have already decided on. I know it's quite a leap from saying "I'm going to have my students do X, Y, and Z activities and then take a quiz" to actually conveying those ideas and instructions to them and having the quiz in hand, but that's what we will spend this entire unit doing for just one module. If you end up doing more than one module, that's great! For this course, you will be assessed on only one module, and this development experience on the one module you develop will give you the skills and information you need to flesh out the rest of your modules.
For this assignment, you should choose a chunk of your course, whether it's a module, unit, or other defined segment of your course, that would take the students one to two weeks to complete in a regular semester or term. You do not have to choose the first unit in your course. You can begin with a unit in the middle of your course if you are more comfortable with the topic and feel it might be easier to develop. Start with a unit that will be fun, easy, and comfortable for you to work with for this first development experience.
Choose the module you want to work on. When you've done that, look at the learning objectives, activities, and assignments you've decided on for that module. These should be listed very clearly on your course plan already. Isolate your activities and assessments so you can see only those and nothing else is distracting you. Maybe you need to paste them on a completely separate document where you have room to brainstorm.
Look at the assessment(s) you want to provide for your students for the module you've chosen. Does it accurately measure the learning objectives you have for the module? Now, look at your course activities. Do they accomplish everything the student would need to do to prepare for the assessment you would like to provide for the students? If any modifications need to be made, now is a good time.
The module development process is not necessarily linear; that is, you don't need to be strict about creating your assessment completely and then moving on to your activities. Think of it more as a fluid, nebulous process where you do what is easiest first! If you already know what your activities need to look like, but you haven't decided on each individual quiz question, that's okay! Design your activities first, and write the quiz questions later. On the other hand, if you already know that the students will be creating a multimedia presentation on a topic to be presented to their classmates as their assessment, and you know what that presentation should look like, go ahead and create the instructions for it, a rubric for grading, and perhaps an example. This will tell you what your activities to prepare the students to create that presentation should look like.
To sum up, in this unit, we are filling in that gap between your [learning objectives, activities, and assessments] and [what the student actually does in the class] for one module. We'll look at a couple of examples below, just in case you want to see how I've done it in the past.
You've already taken a look at some tech tools you might use to develop your assessments and activities in Module 2. You might have found other tools along the way that you like better than the ones you explored in Module 2. The range of tools that are available to you is enormous, and the variety of choices may feel almost overwhelming. Now is a good time to reiterate a point that we covered in the QM Standards Unit:
Technology that is used well in an online course will fade into the background while it brings learning to the front.
The choices you make for tools you use in your course should be based on your learning objectives, activities, and assessments--period. The tools should engage the student in active learning and be relatively easy to use and reliable (not beta versions). You don't need to use your LMS and a dozen other tech tools to make your course effective, and you don't need to buy expensive programs to create your learning objects. In fact, that will probably increase the learning burden on both you and your students and the support burden on you if you use numerous complex tools.
That being said, you wouldn't be taking full advantage of the online environment if you didn't use a few of the fantastic tools that are available to you. So, I recommend starting with your LMS. There are several good reasons to use the institution's LMS, with the primary ones being that it is centrally supported (which takes the support burden off of you and allows you to concentrate on teaching), and the students are very likely already using it for other classes. They go there to find their course information for all of their courses, and they are likely already oriented to it or will be. I have heard many students say that they want to find their courses in the institution's LMS and not have to go to multiple places for each of their online course resources. That said, I'm taking you to many different tools to experience this course because one of the course goals is to experience different ways of delivering course content. The course you are developing will likely not have that goal, so it might be wise to limit your course to a few good tools that work for your students.
The LMS probably can't do everything you want to do, so when you want to create a video, use a web conferencing system, have your students work in a wiki or blog, or have them create a presentation, you'll need to look beyond the LMS. You may have access to some of the pricey applications that make content creation easy, like (used to create this lesson), Camtasia, Adobe Connect, or lecture capture tools. If you do, that's great, and by all means, you should make use of them if they fit your purposes.
If you don't, there are good alternatives! There are plenty of free tools available that make content creation relatively easy. Keep in mind that you don't want to spend a great deal of time on this step in your course development for this course. It is incredibly easy to get bogged down in researching tools because it is fun! I will say it again: decide what your students need to do and find the right tool for them to get it done.
Let's take one more look at the QM Standard 6 criteria:
Since many of you are probably working on courses that might be taught at Ohio State, let me take a moment to talk about some of my favorite tools.
Adobe Connect is a web conferencing system that allows various kinds of virtual meetings. You can meet synchronously with your students, your students can meet with each other, or meetings/presentations can be recorded for later viewing. There are some distinct advantages and disadvantages to synchronous meetings at a distance in an online course. Obviously, the ability to increase the sense of instructor and student presence and build community is the biggest advantage, along with the ability to engage the student in some really fun quasi-face-to-face interaction with the tools in Connect. However, some students register for an online course for the very specific reason that they do not want to have a set time when they have to be somewhere, even if it is just in front of their own computer at home. They want to be able to do their work when it is convenient for them because they have jobs, family, and other obligations that keep them from attending face-to-face classes. My advice would be to carefully examine your need for synchronous meetings and determine how many you must have. Keep them at that number, and make them count! If you decide to have them at all, pack them with important information and activities; make them meaningful to the online/distance student. And, if you're making attendance at the meetings required, be very certain that you've made it explicitly clear before the student registers for the course that the synchronous meetings are required. If they are not required, you can always record the meeting for students who missed it to view later.
This tool is quite expensive. Ohio State conducted an Adobe Connect pilot in 2012, and it was offered to faculty and staff as a Carmen service (called CarmenConnect) beginning in 2013. Right now, OSU faculty and staff (including you, if you teach) can create their own meeting rooms in CarmenConnect. Go to https://carmenconnect.osu.edu and use your OSU credentials to log in. You should see a Meeting button next to the words "Create New:" If you don't see that buton, contact me for furher assisanced or write carmenconnect@osu.edu.
Do you have PowerPoints you want to use in your course? Despite nasty rumors that occasionally fly around in education, PowerPoint is not inherently evil. In fact, it can be an extremely useful tool when used correctly. You know the rules of good PowerPoint presentations, so I'm not going to repeat them here. Specifically for online courses, you probably want to narrate your PowerPoints, and that will require captioning, but this is not the place to train you to do that. If you want to know more, search for tips on good PowerPoint presentations, and consider saving your PowerPoints in a video format. This can be done with a simple screencasting program (see Screencast-o-matic below) or with a free tool called iSpring Free. This is one of the better free tools I've ever used. It's fairly easy to get used to, and it preserves narration and even most PowerPoint transitions. Test it thoroughly, though, before you commit to converting all of your PowerPoints to make sure it is behaving in the way you need it to. Here's a PDF that explains how to convert your narrated PowerPoint file in iSpring and then upload it to Carmen (D2L).
I've created a few videos for this course with Screencast-o-matic, and I use it about two or three times a week to give and get tech support. It is extremely easy to use, and it's free. I chose it over other screen capture tools because it is easy to caption, and closed captioning is absolutely necessary for videos (that have narration) in online courses. I cannot say for sure that all of the videos *will* be captioned by the time you view them, but they certainly will be in the near future.
Google Docs, Google Presentations, Google Forms, Google Sites, are just a few of the tools from Google that you may want to take advantage of. I need to emphasize one important point: Google runs in the cloud. That means that all of the data in your docs, spreadsheets, presentations, and everything else Google-based is stored somewhere that is essentially open to vulnerability, and if you, as an instructor, decide to use Google, you take on the risk associated with the compromise of that data. OSU will not protect you if there is an incident. This obviously has FERPA implications. OSU had a cloud computing policy which you will want to be familiar with before you use any tool that stores data in the cloud. With that said, if your project does not expose FERPA-protected student data, you can use Google applications with confidence. Note in particular the Tips for Instructors section at the bottom of the OSU cloud computing policy.
There are many other useful tools available for free that you might want to use, so I'll present an extensive list to you on the next page, but please do not get bogged down on this step. Concentrate on getting your module development complete. You can't use every tool on the menu in one module, so choose one or two and get the hard work of developing done. You have the rest of your career to play with the tools.
Remember those tools you explored in Module 2? You might want to use one of those to create the learning activities and assessments for your module. You are, however, welcome to choose other tools. If you're still looking for that perfect tool to accomplish your goal, I'll provide a web site where you can find suggestions below.
It is with great trepidation that I offer the following list of tech tools to you because I know how easy it is to get lost for a whole day in this list. You need to spend your time working on your course and not getting distracted by the plethora of possibilities, but just in case you know you need to, for example, create a screencast, and you're not sure what to use to do it, here's an extensive list of tools categorized by task type. (It is also embedded below.)
Please go on to the next page for instructions to complete this unit and for some examples of what you need to do.
By now, you probably understand that you need to flesh out the activities and assessments for your chosen unit. If I enter your course as a student to complete the unit, everything I need to be successful in that module should be there. Let's assume that I've already oriented to your course as a student and understand the general requirements according to the syllabus. It's just this one module I need to begin and end successfully. So, the expectation is that the student will see a learning guide or some instructions to help them know what they should do, how to begin, how to proceed, how they will be assessed, etc.
In Chapter 4, Smith delineates the elements of the learning guide. Review that section of your textbook to know what you need to include and how to include it in the learning guide you will create. The elements do not have to be organized or titled exactly like Smith describes them, but they need to be present in your module or unit. Refer to the grading rubric in Carmen (and not the Smith textbook necessarily) for the specifics of what is needed in your module.
Peer review is a form of self assessment, and you will engage in that during this unit. The sections that *must* be present in your module and referenced on your learning guide are listed on the grading rubric for this unit. Your peer partner will be reviewing your module according to that grading rubric. I cannot stress enough that you should refer to this grading rubric early and often as you complete this module's activities.
You will be assigned a partner for this peer review. You'll put your peer partner in your Carmen course in the student role (if you need instructions to do that, here they are! Click on Manually Enroll a Participant), and he or she will do the same for you. You must activate your course for your peer partner to access it in the student role. He or she will not be able to enter your course as a student if your course is not activated.
Your module needs to be ready for peer review by the date and time specified on the Course Calendar. Peers can begin reviewing after that time, and reviews must be complete and submitted to the appropriate dropbox by the date and time specified on the Course Calendar.
Modifications to modules based on recommendations from peer reviews must be made by the date and time specified on the Course Calendar for "One complete module in Carmen course." Modifications based on peer recommendations are at the discretion of the coures designer. That is, you as the course designer can choose not to implement a recommendation your peer makes to you, but you will be held responsible for meeting the standards on the grading rubric. I will be using the grading rubric in Carmen titled "Develop One Course Module Rubric" to assess your module, so please refer to that rubric to make sure your module meets the grading standards!
To complete the review of your peer's module, enter their course in Carmen (remember that you'll find their course on your Student tab and not your Instructor tab). Download the Excel peer evaluation rubric file from the "Peer Review for One Module" dropbox. It is a copy of the rubric that will be used by me to evaluate your module when you submit it in its revised stated the following week. The instructions below appear at the top of the rubric you will complete as a peer reviewer. Please read them carefully!
| You and a peer will look over each other's modules and provide feedback to each other on this rubric. The 50 points that you earn from this exercise will be based on the quality of the feedback you provide to your peer and not on the quality of the module you review. Keep in mind the five components of a helpful recommendation as you compose your comments to your peer. You can find those five components on Sheet 2 of this document Remember to make your recommendations balanced, which means you point out positive things as well as offer constructive criticism (equal parts of each, please). Be sure your tone is collegial, sensitive, and helpful. This assignment is worth 50 points. You will receive 5 points for a balanced and helpful recommendation on each of the 10 criterion below. If you don't offer a recommendation or any comments at all on a criterion, you will not receive any points for that criterion. |
Submit your completed peer reviewer rubric to the appropriate dropbox by the date and time specified on the Course Calendar. Submit it to your peer also by email. You should read your peer's comments carefully and decide if you wish to make modifications to your module. If you do want to modify your module in any way, those modifications should be complete by the date and time specified on the Course Calendar for the submission of "One complete module in Carmen course."
Just so there is less confusion about how to download the Excel file and use it to evaluate your peer's module, I've created a short screencast to show you how. (This was created on an older versino of Carmen, but the steps are still the same.) After your peer has reviewed your course, don't forget to implement any suggestions you like and submit your module for my review.