Conquering the Content E-Book

Robin M. Smith

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Serie: Online Teaching and Learning Series (OTL)
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 238

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Put your course online now, without sacrificing pedagogical quality Conquering the Content: A Blueprint for Online Course Design and Development, Second Edition is a highly practical guide to creating online courses. With guidance on incorporating learning theory into online course content, as well as a host of templates, learning guides, and sample files, this book furnishes instructors and instructional designers with the information and tools they need to design and develop their course content to better serve online students. This second edition introduces relevance statements and time-saving tips as well as content maps which provide a scaffold for content organization and help students anchor the topics in their memories for retrieval. Readers will gain expert insight and best practices for designing within the rapidly changing online learning environment and learn to incorporate recent advances that can improve student outcomes. Because the book is designed to focus on online teaching pedagogy, it won't go out of date as specific tools change. Nearly one-third of all students in higher education are taking at least one online class, and online hybrid classes are becoming more widespread. Distance learning is becoming the norm, but creating an online class is more complex than just posting course content on a website. Conquering the Content demonstrates how instructors can best revamp their course content to suit the online learning environment, and provides the tools and resources instructors need to transfer their effectiveness from the classroom to the online environment. Learn how to: * Create student-friendly navigation structures that support what is known about the brain and learning * Organize content based on priority, flow, and easy navigation * Create assessments that work within the parameters of an online course * "Chunk" information to facilitate better processing Time is of the essence in getting a course online, but it's important that pedagogy not get lost in the crush of new content. Course design is just as critical as course content when it comes to distance learning outcomes, and Conquering the Content provides a holistic and practical approach to effective online course development.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title

Copyright

PREFACE

THE AUTHOR

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

1 BEGIN HERE

GOOD TEACHING

THINK LEARNING, NOT TEACHING

ADVANTAGES TO HAVING A COURSE ONLINE

ENVIRONMENT

IT'S Ok TO BE UNCOMFORTABLE

HOW ONLINE LEARNING IS DIFFERENT FROM FACE-TO-FACE LEARNING

COURSE SELECTION AND DOCUMENTATION

QUESTIONS FROM FIRST-TIME ONLINE INSTRUCTORS

2 CONTENT MAP

CONTENT MAP OVERVIEW

USES OF CONTENT MAPS

CONTENT MAP DEVELOPMENT BLUEPRINT

COURSE STRUCTURES BLUEPRINT

3 LEARNING GUIDE

ENDURING VS. NONENDURING CONTENT

AUDIENCES AND FUNCTIONS

LEARNING GUIDE COMPONENTS

LEARNING GUIDE DEVELOPMENT BLUEPRINT

4 PRIORITIZING

PRIORITIZE COURSE DEVELOPMENT

REDUCE LEARNER ANXIETY

CONSIDER LEARNER NEEDS

REDUCE FACULTY ANXIETY

SELECT PRIORITIES BLUEPRINT

TEACH FOR THE LONG TERM

5 CONTENT

HOW YOU LEARN

HOW THE BRAIN PROCESSES INFORMATION

INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS

CHUNKING

CHUNKING BLUEPRINT

BRIDGES BLUEPRINT

6 CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

PEER REVIEW

EFFECTIVE PRACTICES

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

DOCUMENT FOR REVISIONS

WHERE TO GO FROM HERE

WHAT YOU HAVE CONQUERED

REFERENCES

GLOSSARY

ACTION ITEMS

Lesson 1: Begin Here

Lesson 2: Content Map

Lesson 3: Learning Guide

Lesson 4: Prioritizing

Lesson 5: Content

Lesson 6: Continuous Improvement

More from Wiley

Index

End User License Agreement

List of Illustrations

5 CONTENT

Figure 5.1

Figure 5.2

Figure 5.3

Guide

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Table of Contents

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Jossey-Bass Guides to Online Teaching and Learning

Conquering the Content

A Blueprint for Online Course Design and Development

SECOND EDITION

Robin M. Smith

Cover image: © -Vladimir- | Thinkstock

Cover design: Wiley

Copyright © 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Smith, Robin M., 1962-

Conquering the content : a blueprint for online course design and development / Robin M. Smith. — Second edition.

pages cm — (Jossey-bass guides to online teaching and learning)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-118-71708-0 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-118-71710-3 (ebk.)

ISBN 978-1-118-71714-1 (ebk.)

1. Web-based instruction—Design. 2. College teaching. I. Title.

LB1044.87.S617 2014

378.1′7344678—dc23

2014013588

SECOND EDITION

PREFACE

I developed an online biology course with the laboratory in 1997, which was an exciting new experience for me. However, until the course began, I didn't fully comprehend what it might mean to my students. This realization is what changed my career from that of a faculty member teaching in the life sciences to an instructional designer, workshop facilitator, and administrator committed to making higher education accessible to students within their current life situation.

This experience during my first semester teaching online changed my career. Perhaps you've encountered similar students. The names have been changed.

Steven and his wife, Jenny, have three children: Drew, age five; Seth, three; and Jessica, eighteen months. Steven, a police officer for the local police department, doesn't earn enough at his job to make ends meet for their growing family. The city has tried to increase police salaries, but voters have rejected the last three tax initiatives. Steven took on an additional job just over two years ago when they found out their third child was on the way.

Steven and Jenny decided they both needed an education to improve their financial situation. Jenny is now in school full-time; with three preschool children, she doesn't work outside the home. Steven took a third job, this one part-time, to help pay for their tuition. Steven will get a raise when he completes his associate's degree, which will allow them to afford the gas for him to commute to the university, forty miles away, one night a week. At the university he can eventually earn a four-year degree, leading to a better, higher-paying job in the police department that will support his family and allow them more stability. There is one problem: the only class he needs to graduate with his associate's degree is biological sciences with a laboratory; it meets five hours per week over four different days, and there is no way he can juggle all of his work schedules to be off that many hours each week. So far, an entire semester and a summer have elapsed with no solution to this scheduling challenge.

As providence would have it, that fall my biology course was offered online for the first time. Steven was in my course and faithfully logged in every night after his shift ended at 11:00 p.m. Finally, the opportunity to complete an associate's degree, get that raise, and begin work on a bachelor's degree was within reach for Steven! What an amazing opportunity this was for me to understand how important online learning can be in the lives of students.

I have had the good fortune to be connected with countless students for whom online learning has had a life-changing impact. These students have been able to earn a degree from home rather than commute, which has allowed them to get an education that otherwise would have been impossible because of family responsibilities. I live in a rural state, where many individuals need to care for children or aging parents (or both), and may not have transportation reliable enough for a long commute. Online learning is making a positive economic impact on families by allowing individuals to create a better life for themselves and their children. The number of hurdles students—particularly first-generation college students—must jump in order to obtain an education is staggering. Those of us who choose to put our courses online can be part of the solution.

Many of us entered teaching in order to make a difference in people's lives. I have seen the enormous difference online courses can make both to the students who are taking the courses and to their families. Students need options for furthering their education without the constraints of attending face-to-face courses.

I also understand the time constraints faculty have to deal with and the time investment required to develop an online course. With faculty under pressure from so many responsibilities other than teaching, I realized that creating online courses needed to be made less burdensome for faculty.

In order for students to have plentiful opportunities for online learning, it is essential for faculty to have an easy-to-implement method of developing online courses. Conquering the Content: A Blueprint for Online Course Design and Development will provide you with a customizable method of developing an online course that is well organized, high quality, and easy to update. It is my goal that with Conquering the Content you will create a solid foundation for a course that you can modify as technology changes, your skill level increases, and your experience with online teaching progresses.

The course development system presented in this book is based on educational principles, adult learning principles, online learning principles, and brain and learning theory. It is not subject matter specific, nor is it learning management system specific. Regardless of the subject you are teaching or the way you are delivering your content, the principles in this book are applicable. Using this system also improved my face-to-face teaching, so even if you are not teaching online, your students can benefit from Conquering the Content.

An additional goal of Conquering the Content is to allow you to remain the subject matter expert. Therefore, I will give you enough information to understand how learning takes place, how teaching online is different from teaching in the face-to-face environment, and what you need to do to get your course online; I also provide information about course design and organization and how to avoid some of the common pitfalls you are likely to encounter as you proceed through the course development process. This book presents a practical approach that will lead you through the lessons. Conquering the Content accommodates the flexibility needed to customize your course to fit your own style.

Conquering the Content encourages you to look at your course as a whole, select the highest-priority topics for the overall course, and place those items online first. In this way, the fundamentals for the entire course will be established and produced prior to adding anything fancy or flashy to any one chapter or lesson. You'll see later that I recommend using the term lesson as opposed to chapter because book chapters are likely to change with a new edition, and I'd like to be sure you don't have to make substantial changes each time the book edition changes. Throughout Conquering the Content, I have modeled many of the features of course design that I recommend you use in your online course. Therefore, I refer to chapters in this book as lessons; this will also accommodate those students in instructional design courses using Conquering the Content as a textbook.

You may not have an award-winning Lesson 1, but you will have completed the basis of the entire course. As an online instructor, I've found the latter to be much preferable to the former. Conquering the Content provides the option to add layers to your course as your skills and experience grow. Later you may have that award-winning course, but you probably also will have some online teaching experience to make the revisions you'll need for that award.

Since Conquering the Content was published in 2008, I've heard from individuals in a wide variety of settings who have successfully used this system of course development. This process has already proven successful for biological and physical sciences, humanities, history, composition, literature, psychology, philosophy, speech, technical writing, elementary education, mathematics, computer science, accounting, gerontology, wastewater treatment, sleep deprivation, ethics, psychiatry, communications, pharmacy, engineering, health sciences, nursing, education, counseling, business, and numerous other courses. Conquering the Content has been adopted at several institutions as their faculty development model for faculty who will be teaching online and is also used as a textbook in multiple instructional design courses.

I'd like to think that every online course has ample development time, a graphic artist, an instructional designer, an animation developer, a peer-review team, a production staff, a pilot test with learners, and time for redevelopment following those activities. However, many of us are essentially on our own to design, develop, and produce our online courses. So we do indeed have some challenges to conquer.

I am confident that you will save time and have a well-structured online course by working through the action steps in this book. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to present these ideas to you.

THE AUTHOR

Robin M. Smith, Ph.D., is the Director of eLearning at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, where she leads the accelerated and online programs. Robin has worked at various institutions of higher education and served on numerous grants and federal contracts where she has had the opportunity to quickly launch multiple e-learning programs. Her knowledge of instructional design, adult learning, faculty development, and efficiency of processes has benefited numerous groups with whom she has served as a consultant. Robin holds a Ph.D. in systematic entomology from Texas A&M University. The principles of systematics, taxonomy, and knowledge management apply equally well to insects and course content. Robin has worked with e-learning since 1997 and was one of the first to put a laboratory course online.

Robin enjoys leading practical, results-oriented workshops and may be reached at [email protected]. Her website is http://ConqueringtheContent.com.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to the many workshop participants who have provided feedback and helped refine my ideas and techniques over the years. Those experiences led me to the opportunity to write. I thank Keith Pratt for prompting me to write the first edition of Conquering the Content after hearing me speak on chunking course content. It is because of his early vision that you are reading this.

Many thanks to the readers of the first edition who contacted me about their successes with the processes and tools contained in Conquering the Content: A Step-by-Step Guide to Online Course Design.

Thank you to the institutions, large and small, who reached out to me after Conquering the Content was published, inviting me to travel (in person or virtually) to your campus and conduct workshops to help faculty move forward with development of online courses. I have thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to meet faculty in person and learn more about online initiatives at institutions where I've been invited to do workshops. Your feedback has contributed to this second edition.

Thank you to those individuals who published reviews of the first edition in scholarly journals. I appreciate your sharing your thoughts with others who may be interested in Conquering the Content.

Thank you to Cynthia Saylors, M.Ed., and Katy Warren, M.Ed., for willingly sharing our working example of the Content Map from their online dental radiography course.

Thank you to the anonymous reviewers for providing valuable suggestions and feedback on early drafts. The published version is much stronger because of the time you invested.

My editor, Alison Knowles, has truly partnered with me on Conquering the Content: A Blueprint for Online Course Design and Development. Her regular calls and supportive conversations have been invaluable in writing the second edition. I particularly appreciate Alison for catching and sharing my vision of a more graphical layout and for her many efforts to see those ideas through to publication. The second edition is more aesthetically appealing because of her.

Many thanks to my family, friends, and colleagues for their patience, support, and encouragement throughout the process of moving the ideas from my mind into publishable form!

INTRODUCTION

Much of the format of Conquering the Content: A Blueprint for Online Course Design and Development serves as a model of the suggestions I present for each of the lessons in your online course. Just as I have used this development system to create both online and face-to-face courses, I also used it to develop and organize the content for this book. I believe you will find that Conquering the Content presents an organized approach to design and development of online courses that you will also find useful for face-to-face courses.

Each of my online courses has a Begin Here segment that describes the way the course will work and essential elements such as the syllabus, schedule, and other course overview documents that learners will need to gain an understanding of how to proceed through the course. In addition, background information for the course content is in this section. Lesson 1 serves that purpose in this book.

In my online courses as well as in Conquering the Content, I begin each lesson with a Content Map. The Content Map presents an overview of the topics, presents information retrieval cues to learners, and provides context by illustrating the placement of a topic within the remainder of the content. In Lesson 2, we will develop the Content Map for your online course.

The second component is the lesson introduction, which is typically an audio or video segment introducing the topic. I had an outpouring of positive feedback from learners when I added this feature to my online course. Giving an opportunity for learners to hear directly from me helps them feel connected and confident that they understand my directions. This feature of the course represents Mayer's Personalization Theory and supports the theoretical rationale of that theory by speaking directly to the learners (Mayer, 2009).

Lesson Relevance: I also include a lesson relevance statement to provide an overview of each lesson and highlight why it matters. Making the learning relevant helps students connect new content to their prior learning; it also helps with student motivation. If students do not find the content of the course interesting or relevant, they may see little or no value in mastering it and may fail to engage in the behaviors required for deep learning (Ambrose et al., 2010).

The next major feature of the course and this book is the Learning Guide, which serves three major purposes. The Learning Guide is developed early in the process of Conquering the Content and will serve as a course development map for the remainder of your content. It is also your key to an easily updateable course. In addition, the Learning Guide is a one-page overview of the lesson, which learners will typically print out to use whether they are studying content online or offline. The Learning Guide has widespread impact on both you and your students, so we will take extra time to ensure that this critical feature provides a very stable foundation for your online course. Lesson 3 will highlight the many benefits of the Learning Guide and guide you through development of your own.

Once the Content Map and Learning Guides have been established, we will spend time in Lesson 4, Prioritizing. It is essential that we determine the features of your online course to develop first. Throughout Conquering the Content, we focus on ensuring that you develop the course in stages so that you begin with a foundation of the entire course before adding layers of richness. There are several reasons for this, not the least of which is that I am very cognizant of your time constraints. I know that you may have to stop before you are completely finished with the course, and with this system, that is OK! My goal is to help you through course development as far as you possibly can get before you run out of time, but I know that at some point you will likely run out of time. Following this system, we will ensure that you have multiple points along the development path that provide an option to stop developing and begin delivering the course. You will have established a firm foundation for your entire course by the end of Lesson 3. Each subsequent lesson adds layers of richness to the entire course.

Once you have established priorities for course development, we will move to Lesson 5, Content, where we will focus on the presentation of your subject matter. Because most of the content for this book is text based, the modeling is not quite as rich in this lesson as it could be in another format. By placing your content online, you will have many more options than those I am able to model in a book format. We will focus on aspects of working memory, learning principles, chunking, and the appropriate way to present content in the online environment. I hope you will take advantage of the many options available online for presenting content. This is where the advantages of online learning really shine.

Throughout Conquering the Content, I intersperse Action Items. These are similar to the Learning Activities in your online course. As highlighted in Lesson 5, Content, presenting some content and then asking learners to participate in an activity helps reinforce their learning and will provide opportunities for feedback about how well they are grasping the concepts.

ACTION ITEM 10

Using the outline you created, add topics to the Content Map format of your choice.

Also interspersed throughout the book are time-saving tips to help you be efficient with your online courses.

Overall course structure should be independent of time and of book chapters.

In Lesson 6, Continuous Improvement, I will highlight some best practices for course delivery and also some convenient and efficient methods for capturing and incorporating updates to your course each time you teach it.

At the end of each lesson, I include two items to help share ideas. One is “Conquering the Content in Action,” in which I describe successes other faculty members have experienced using the Conquering the Content system.

I also invite you to connect with the online Conquering the Content Community by using the links associated with the “Share” image so that you can share examples from your course as well as view examples from others.

CONQUERING THE CONTENT IN ACTION

FACULTY EXPERIENCES WITH PRIORITIZING AND LAYERING

A faculty member uncertain about teaching online used layering to gradually increase portions of his course that were online so that the online component advanced from supplemental to fully online. Positive learner feedback and allowing himself time to become more comfortable with the online environment were the keys to success.

A reluctant humanities professor became interested and motivated to move additional components of the course to the online environment when an opportunity for international travel arose during the semester.

An elementary education professor is using prioritizing and layering to help future teachers learn to teach online.

SHARE

Share your Begin Here ideas and view others in the Conquering the Content Community: http://ConqueringtheContent.com/BH/Share

Now that you've had an overview of how the book guides you through the design and development process, I believe that together we can conquer the content in your online course!

1BEGIN HERE

HTTP://CONQUERINGTHECONTENT.COM/BH/INTRO

Lesson Relevance: This lesson will set the stage for development of your online course. We will highlight some of the differences between the face-to-face and online environments, recognize that it is natural to feel uncomfortable when making these alterations to your teaching, highlight the importance of separating course development from course delivery, prepare for future updates to your course, and answer some typical questions of first-time online instructors.

CONQUERING THE CONTENT: A BLUEPRINT FOR ONLINE COURSE DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT

Lesson 1, Begin Here

LEARNING GOALS/OUTCOMES

Begin Here

Upon completion of this lesson, you will be able to:

Infer qualities of good teachers by describing a teacher who positively influenced you.

Explain the value that you, as a unique individual, bring to your subject matter.

Differentiate between the environments of online and face-to-face courses.

Separate design and development tasks from delivery tasks.

Recognize the need to design with updating in mind.

Resolve some issues of first-time online instructors.

Begin to approach course design from the learner's perspective.

Document current course organization and structure.

LEARNING RESOURCES

References

Chickering, A., and Gamson, Z. “Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education.”

AAHE Bulletin

, Mar. 1987, pp. 3–6.

Felder, R. “Learning and Teaching Styles in Engineering Education.”

Engineering Education

, 1988,

78

(7), 674–681.

Merrill, M. “First Principles of Instruction.”

Educational Technology Research and Development

, 2002,

50

(3), 43–59.

CONTENT

Required Resource

Smith, R. “Lesson 1, Begin Here.”

Conquering the Content: A Blueprint for Online Course Design and Development

. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2014.

LEARNING ACTIVITIES

Activities for This Lesson

Describe your favorite teacher.

Identify the value you, as a unique individual, add to a course.

Select one course on which to work.

Gather materials for the course that you will place online.

Identify improvements needed for your current course.

SELF-ASSESSMENT

Check Your Understanding

Express qualities important for good teaching.