A Journey in Online Learning Development
Dear Friends,
Developing an online course for students, no matter the age of the students, is not an easy task. There is so much to take into consideration. The course module I have created is for 8th grade students in Michigan to gain exposure to the Science-Fiction genre. You can find access to my course here:
When
beginning the development of this course, I thought that I would be
able to design a course that would be completely online. I was going to
use this approach because I am not in the classroom this year as a
teacher. With my position as an instructional coach, I would not have
the privilege of implementing the course myself. I thought that I could
develop this for our new writing teacher to use. The more I thought
about it and worked through my design and held conversations with my
professor, I chose to take a more hybrid approach to the course’s
development. I chose to use the flipped-classroom model (as some of our
middle school teachers are trying to do this) so students could access
lecture and learning material online while coming to class for more
meaningful conversation time. The flipped-model is being used by some
teachers with great success. Students complete their learning online
for homework and come to class the next day for in-depth conversations
about their learning. This model when used in science courses allow for
more lab time.
I
wanted to ensure that students would walk away from this course with a
clear understanding of science-fiction and be able to produce a piece of
their own. I used multiple video clips from science-fiction movies to
provide students with a visual for a deeper understanding of the genre.
I also incorporated a couple of different readings and a podcast from
the original broadcast of The War of the Worlds.
I tried to provide students examples using different learning styles.
Blog postings are incorporated as well which help guide the in-class
conversations.
I
made many mistakes along the way in this course development, and I am
not done yet! I intend on continuing the development of this hybrid
course. I would also like to work to take this hybrid course and create
a completely online course. Here are a few words of advice for anyone
trying to develop an online course:
- Choose your CMS (Content Management System) wisely! Make sure you are comfortable or become comfortable with what CMS you will use to create your online module. Look for something that will meet your needs and the needs of your students. I chose to use Weebly because it is free and easy to use. I highly recommend the educator version!
- Don’t go too big! When I started my course design, I bit off way more than I could chew. It takes time to develop a highly effective course.
- Begin with the End in Mind: What knowledge do you want students to have and how will you know that have that knowledge? This will make your journey much easier!
- Find a Criteria Rubric: Using a rubric to guide your online creation will push your thinking and help you create the best module you can. I used the Quality Matters 6-12 Standards rubric to guide my module creation. There are others out there, but I believe the Quality Matters pushed my thinking the most when developing my course.
- Keep a Developer’s Notebook: Whether it be on paper or online, write your thoughts down! You will find this helpful to guide your module development and will also find yourself making many revisions!
You can find my developer’s notebook here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lHi-J5EC2GrxDuBknmyDWD9ZfJVI8hKliRLEdpi99uQ/edit. Good luck to you on your online course development. Be ready for a great journey!
Sincerely,
Aubrey McClain
