Organize Your Online Course

Organize Your Online Course

At last, we are working with content!

Finally, we are going to start putting course content in the platform that you've chosed for your course. This may be OSU's learning management system (LMS), Carmen. First, I want to say a word about learning management systems. Wherever you go to teach, there will likely be an LMS. Various LMSs will look very different on the surface, but they all have basically the same tools (like the gradebook, the discussion board, the place where content goes, etc.). Once you learn to use the tools in a pedagogically sound way, moving from one LMS to another is just a matter of learning how the tools function (which buttons to push and when, basically). So, don't be shy about teaching at another institution because they have an LMS you aren't familiar with.

Also, you may be tempted to use something new, different, and "cooler" than your institution's LMS. I won't tell you not to, but be advised that your institution's LMS is probably the best place for your online course if it is a for-credit, academic course because of the support that probably comes with it for both you and your students. If you choose some other LMS or application that isn't centrally supported at your institution, you are, in effect, taking on the burden of technical support for yourself and your students. I've already addressed this in the QM Standards unit, so I won't overwork the point here.

Why is it called Carmen when it's really Desire2Learn (or D2L)?

Carmen is actually the name used for a set of e-learning tools (which includes only the LMS, CarmenWiki, and maybe Connect at the time of this writing) used at Ohio State. The LMS has commonly become known as Carmen, and that is what most people think of now when they hear or use the word in a work context at Ohio State. Carmen is based on Desire2Learn, and it is named Carmen because of that name's historical significance at Ohio State.

Many institutions, including K-12 schools, use Desire2Learn, but only we at Ohio State refer to it as Carmen, so if you are searching for information on the internet about our LMS, use the term Desire2Learn or D2L to get the best search results. If you are searching for help with the LMS specific to Ohio State, use the term Carmen.

First, find your Carmen course

Go to https://carmen.osu.edu, log in, and click on your Instructor tab. You will find your course on your instructor tab, and it will be titled with your name-dot-number first, and then "Course Development Shell." (If you don't see this course by Week 3, send me an email.) Click on the course title to enter the course.

Many of you are already used to working in Carmen as a student, and you may have experience in the instructor role as well. If you know how to use Carmen as an instructor, you are in a very good position to move ahead to the next step. If you need some orientation to using Carmen in the instructor role, please refer to these Carmen support pages from the OSU Office of Distance Education and eLearning (ODEE). The link to these resources is also under the Resource Section in our Carmen course.  

Using the Course Builder in Carmen

You will use the Course Builder in Carmen to create the structure and organization for your course. The Course Builder in Carmen is a relatively new tool that makes it very easy to create your course organization even if you don't have all the files and content ready to upload yet. You can create a course directly in Carmen Content, and you are welcome to do this if that is what you prefer and are used to doing. However, the distinct advantage of using the Course Builder is that you can create placeholders that tell you what content you plan to put in a module or unit, but you don't need the already-prepared content to create the placeholder. However, if you work in the Content area of Carmen, you cannot, for example, create a link to a syllabus unless you have the actual syllabus to upload; that is, there are no placeholders in Content.

If this sounds confusing, don't worry. Just keep reading, watch the video, and things should become much clearer.

To learn to use the Course Builder in Carmen, first open it up in your own Carmen course. You can access your Course Builder by clicking on Edit Course in the gray navigation bar and then clicking on Course Builder.

You may want to spend a few minutes orienting to the Course Builder. Here is a one-page text resource (a quick read) from University of Colorado that should help. If you want more detailed help with instructional videos, take a look at this University of Wisconsin resource that addresses both the Course Builder and the Content area.

Let me just point out one more time that whatever you create in the Course Builder appears in Content, and whatever you create in Content appears in the Course Builder with the exception of empty placeholders. You can create an empty placeholder for a file or activity in the Course Builder, but you cannot do that in Content. (And empty placeholders that show in the Course Builder will not show in Content until you fill the placeholder with something that actually exists.) Don't be afraid to experiment and click around in Carmen and the Course Builder. You can't break anything, and even if you do, it won't matter! I'll create another course for you. If you're feeling confused, go ahead and view the two resources above. I think you will feel much more comfortable with the tool after you put the Course Builder in action.

Decide on an organizational structure

It is time to decide how you want to divide your course up into manageable parts and present those parts to the student. You may have already partially or fully decided on a course organization, but this is where you'll drive a stake in the ground and say, "This is how I'm going to organize my course content."

Read Chapter 4 and 5 in your textbook!

Please don't skip this step. You need the information in Chapters 4 and 5 of Smith to proceed. She addresses chunking in Chapter 5, and we'll cover that first. She addresses learning guides in Chapter 4, and we'll cover that a little bit later, but it's good to be thinking about all of these things as you progress through your course development. I am not asking you to complete any of the exercises she has in the back of the book for a grade. It is, however, very important that you know the tips and tricks she describes in these chapters. She speaks as someone who has online teaching and course development experience, and as she tells you in her book, she has learned some things the hard way (as have I).

Smith gives you some ideas about how to "chunk" your entire course into manageable segments. I will add the following:

• Refer back to your learning objectives for the course. Which ones are related? Do they all deserve their own chunk? Or should some be combined in a single chunk (or module, or unit)?
• What are you going to call your chunks? (Please don't call them chunks.) Modules and units are two common terms. You may have others in mind.
• It is not recommended that you call the chunks "Week 1, Week 2" etc. for reasons that Smith explains. However, it works fairly well from a student point of view to align units with weeks, so Unit 1 might be completed during the usual Week 1, etc. You just don't want to be limited by those labels on your units if you happen to teach the course during a condensed summer session or something like that.
• Make sure each of your learning objectives and the assessments and activities on your course plan has a place in one of the modules or units. I should be able to read any one of your learning objectives and say to myself, "It probably belongs in that unit."
• If necessary, subdivide your modules into separate units to cover the learning objective in reasonably sized portions. If you aren't sure what a reasonably sized portion is, consult with me. It depends on how quickly material needs to be covered, but for a regular quarter or semester term, I recommend making each chunk equal to about a week's worth and not more than two weeks of course material.
• I designed the course you are taking now to have five modules with subdivisions into units. You can choose to have just modules or just units. Make your organization make sense for your course, and make it make sense to your students.
• Give the chunks appropriate and consistent names (titles). Make them as brief but as descriptive as you can, and be sure they will be meaningful to the student. For an example of this kind of naming, see the titles I've applied to the modules and units in this course.
• For the purposes of this course you are taking now and for your own functional peace of mind, I recommend that you do not make your individual modules cover too much material. You'll be expected to fully develop at least one module or unit for your course in order to earn some of the points in this course (7727). If you have only two modules in your entire course, you'll be developing half a course in the span of two weeks. That will be very intense and probably not a good time for you. Create chunks that you and your students can manage.
• Don't get stuck on this chunking step. It should be relatively easy, so if you are having difficulty, consult with a peer in the class or with me.

Create your course structure in Carmen!

If you haven't already, open up Course Builder in Carmen (Edit Course > Course Builder), and begin creating your organizational structure.

Tips for using the Course Builder:

• Click on the top bar in the center that contains your course information ("Demonstration Course" in the example below), and then click on Create Module in the box on the right (or drag the module icon to the top bar) to get started.
• Repeat those steps with every major chunk or module or unit you want to create.
• To add things to each module, you can just drag them from the left side of the window to the module where you want them to exist (just like the videos demonstrate).
• The icons under Build Structure that look grayish are placeholders and are probably the ones you want at this point. Go ahead and experiment with the colorful icons if you want to. Experiment and play with what is there. You cannot break anything, and if you do, it's easy to fix at this point.
• Remember that you can delete any unwanted items in your course structure by clicking on the drop-down arrow in its bar and choosing Remove.
• If you put an item in the wrong module or if you need to move any item, you can drag and drop it.

At this point, you are expected to create your module or unit structure for your course, and that is what you'll be assessed on for now (in addition to a folder structure in the Manage Files area of Carmen; that's coming up next). I have referred several times to dragging and dropping various components into your modules, and you are welcome and encouraged to do that now if you are ready. However, at this point, you will only be assessed on your course structure and organization into manageable and appropriately named chunks. Please see the rubric that will be used to assess your module and folder structure for your course.

Please see the picture below for an example of what you need to have in your Course Builder for this assessment. (This actually comes from an old course of mine. You do not have to include the introductory unit yet. We'll get to that near the end of this course.)

Create your folder structure in Manage Files

Now that you've decided how you are going to organize your course, you need to create folders in the Manage Files area of Carmen to hold the contents of your course.

You may be asking, "Why bother?" Let me tell you why! I see many courses where the files are uploaded at the top level, and there are basically no folders for organization at all. The course works for the students, so who cares if the file organization is a mess?

You probably have, at one time or another in your life, walked into a storage closet where everything had a place and everything was in its place. Those places were labeled and organized in a logical manner. A complete stranger to the closet could have gone in and found an object in a few moments based on just knowing the name of the object.

On the other hand, you've probably also seen a storage space where everything was tossed in haphazardly and the thought of labels seemed like a joke. Some file storage areas in online courses look like this. No one, including the instructor who uploaded the files in the first place can find anything or even identify whether it is a needed file or not. Everything is thrown into one big box (the top level folder) and no file has a logical name that tells you what it is or even what it pertains to.

Imagine if, two or three terms down the road, you need to change one of the documents in your course. There's an embarrassing misspelling, and the students are making fun of you. So, you start looking for the document in your Manage Files area, and you've labeled everything with titles like "4.2SR-tly.667." There are ways, of course, to figure out which document you need, but imagine the time you can save for yourself later if you just give your folders and files logical names now. And just imagine if you have to ask a support person to enter your course and help you with a problem. I frequently hear tech support people making unappreciative comments about the "train wreck" that some instructors have in their Manage Files area.

You don't want your course to look like this. It will cost you time and aggravation that you will not want to give to it. Begin by avoiding this organization disaster from the start.

Take a look at this short video that shows you what a disorganized course file area looks like and what an organized file area looks like. The video shows you how to create and organize your folders in Carmen in order to meet the requirements of this assignment. After you view the video, go to the next page for some final instructions.

What you need to do for this unit

There is not a tremendous amount of work in this "Organize Your Online Course" unit because I want to give people who don't know Carmen very well a chance to get acquainted with her. If you already know Carmen in the instructor role and you didn't ponder for an extended period on your course's organizational structure, you'll probably have a very easy time with this unit. On the other hand, if you don't know how to use Carmen in the instructor role, this unit is your chance to get up to speed with her.

Things you need to complete for this unit:

1. Create your organizational structure in Carmen's Course Builder. There's a picture of one example of such an organizational structure on Page 4 of this lesson
2. Create your folder structure in the Manage Files area of Carmen. There's a video on the previous page that shows you an example of a nicely organized folder structure (the one for this course with five modules, and some unit folders, if necessary, within the module folders). Remember to make your folder structure align well in organization and in title with your structure in Course Builder.
3. Create a screencast using Screencast-o-matic (or whatever screencasting application you prefer) of your course organization. In this screencast, you must tour your Carmen Content area and your Files area and describe how your course is organized. This screencast must be embedded in the "How my course is organized" blog page in your blog. (See the example on the blog template page.)
4. Add me (tornwall.2) to your Carmen course as an Instructor. If you aren't sure how to do that, instructions are available in the ODEE Resource Center (Details > Manage > Manually enroll a participant), and I give a very brief demonstration of how to add a participant to your course in the example screencast on your blog template page. I will need to be able to enter your course and view your Course Builder area and your Files area under Edit Course. You should refer to the assessment rubric in Carmen at Grades > Rubrics to view the grading criteria for this assignment.
5. Addyour module or unit divisions to your course plan, if they aren't arleady on that document. You can add them on the left side where there are spaces for them on the template as in the Course Calendar for this ESETEC 7727 course, or you can add them as headings above each chunk. It does not matter where you put them or how you format them as long as it is very clear to the student which learning objectives, activities, and assessments belong to each module.

Remember that you can contact me with questions, and you are encouraged to collaborate with your peers in this course to find creative solutions to problems.