Put Your Course Online: Six Steps and a Team

Introduction

It takes a team of people to put a course online. Your team should consist of at the very least a curriculum developer, a multimedia instructional designer, and a technical support person. A multimedia instructional designer can provide technical guidance about how to put a functional course online. A curriculum developer will know how to write performance objectives, develop assessment instruments (quizzes and tests), develop instructional strategies, and develop and select instructional materials. The technical support person can troubleshoot and problem solve with connectivity when the user cannot reach data or gain access to it. Other problems the technical support person can troubleshoot are speed of performance, space for data, and program efficiency. The experienced curriculum developer will know that having a way to consistently evaluate the online course is very important.

You can put your course online by following the six step process.

Step One: Give Your Course a Name

This step may seem too elementary, but it sets the foundation. The name of the course should be indicative of its contents. Notice the title of this article. It tells the reader everything except a prerequisite for the course or what the student should know before taking this course. The name of the course can change. After the course is completely designed, the best title will emerge.

The course name should be linked from a homepage that leads the user to a description of what your company or institution is all about and/or information about the individual(s) involved in the course development and instruction. It can link to other courses, too.

Think of the hierarchy of the course and storyboard the entire course site structuring each module using the inverted pyramid style approach. However, all the modules should be linearly organized so that the course is progressive. Linking is the source of progression or movement through the course. Landow (2006) made a strong case for the necessity of links to give users the understanding of where they need to go next in an online course, and why.

Step Two: Write Performance Objectives

The second step to putting a course online is writing the performance objectives. What will the student be able to do at the end of the lesson? Determine three things when writing objectives. First, what action the student will take such as, “The student will be able to make, to complete, to prepare…” Second, it must be measurable, such as quantity, rate, quality, degree of accuracy, data or the like. For example, “The student will be able to complete three tasks.” Third, it must have constraints such as time. For example, “…the student will complete a project within one hour.”

An example of an acceptable performance objective might be, “Given a computer with Web authoring software, the student will design a one-page Web mini lesson of “How to wash your hands” utilizing three multimedia components which include one brief paragraph of text, one graphic and one animation; and the student must complete the project within 30 minutes.”

Step Three: Describe How the Course Works

The online course works similarly to a face-to-face course except that the online course content must be written in such a clear and concise manner that students should not have to ask many questions about how it works. Content written well for the Web uses chunking and clear and concise wording. Short numbered paragraphs create readable and navigate-able content for online readers.

Navigation is probably the most important aspect of putting a course online. Should a student become lost while engaged in an online course, and if they cannot determine what to do next, the navigation is inadequate. Students may drop the course. Worse yet, the instructor will be overwhelmed with email requests for help. While navigating through the course content, students should never ask the question, “What do I do next?” This is your test and you have failed should a student be unable to navigate through the content. Be sure to place navigation visuals such as next and/or back on each interface. A student should be easily able to return to any page of content.

Although the structure of the course content makes up the backbone of the course, online students need to know exactly what to do and how to do it. They need to know the “who, what, when, where and how” of it all. Students need to know what materials will be used, how to get answers to questions in a timely manner, when assignments are due, where deadlines are posted and how to proceed. Students should always know what to do next so that they know how to proceed without difficulty through the course. What students “want” to know are how many tests/quizzes will be given, when and how often are they given, and what kinds of tests/quizzes are given, how many questions are involved, and how long it will take to complete the text/quiz.

Modules/lessons should be designed so that the activities promote learning. For example, be sure students know what is important to remember. Tell them what is important and avoid joking or teasing them with what will be on the test. Create an online help manual to guide students through the course with step-by-step directions, helpful hints, and frequently asked questions. The manual should have policies, procedures and expectations for students as well.

Social presence theory is vital to the success of your online course. Social presence has been defined as the perception by a student that there is a real person communicating via the Web (Gunawardena, 1995; Gunawardena & Zittle, 1997; Savicki & Kelly, 2000). Garrison, Anderson and Archer, (2000) indicate that social presence is the belief that a live person is available to assist with core elements in what is termed as cognitive presence. In order to speak live, instructors should always provide a telephone number and online office hours.

Step Four: Storyboard It

Now that you can describe the course, you probably have your first production scene in mind. Organize materials into modules based upon each objective. Break up the modules into nodes or scene, exercises or cycles of learning that students will participate in so that learning occurs. The storyboard can be done using a wall with Post-It notes, or drawn out with pencil and paper, or using a computer program such as the Organization Chart feature in Microsoft Word. Sketch out in detail every step of your online course. Be sure to match the online tool (email, bulletin boards, discussion board, listservs, chatrooms, whiteboards, calendars, instructor home pages, etc.) to the task (Stanton, Eneman, Rehberg, & McQuillan, 2006).

You will need to contact a Web hosting provider where your course will reside once it is created. One of the three people vital to the development of your online course is a technical support person. There are free providers but their technical support may not be good enough and the ads that come along with their free services may distract your course users. I recommend purchasing Web space from a provider who can offer support services. Often times their services include Web-page design. Otherwise outsource to a Webmaster who will probably have access to a secure server.

There are a few ways to create your course shell or presence online. If you create your course using a Web site creation and management tool like Dreamweaver, FrontPage, or a text editor, you may need to also create some of the features that a Course Management System (CMS) provide, oftentimes touted as LMS (learning management system). Unless you do not need to track students, have discussion forums, group emails, news, surveys and file storage, any Web creation tool will do. This is not to say that you cannot create these features outside of a CMS, it just takes more time to develop. Ask which is best for your purposes, (1) a Web site creation and management tool or (2) a CMS. Generally, CMS are used by academicians.

Then there are the heavy-end online training software such as Toolbook, Quest and Authorware, for example, which are expensive and generally take lots of time to learn. Although time consuming, these tools are excellent for creating menu driven online training. The framework for such a training program would include menu buttons. For example, say your company performed a training needs analysis and discovered they need to train their telemarketers on how to perform at least four different tasks each of which require a variety of processes. One task may be titled Telephone Etiquette; this would be menu item number one. A second task may be titled Negotiating Anger Diffusion; this would be menu item number two and so on. Behind each menu item or module would lay the instructional materials with nodes that would include content, lessons, demonstrations, quizzes, and tests.

Security for your course material is important. Your webmaster can provide password login protection and other security measures. Activate and protect your content at the very beginning of development so that everyone who accesses the course must be qualified to do so.

Step Five: Develop Instructional Strategies/Activities for learning

Technology is not invisible yet, but at least it is easier to maneuver through the Web, build a web page, take an online course and perform our jobs. Student are in a bigger rush than ever to find content online, and “they’re usually task-driven” (Henning, 2000, p. 2). Online readers may, nevertheless, find it daunting to read small text directions as well as squabble through the plethora of content to obtain information they require. It is very important to write for the Web very clearly and briefly exactly what they need to know in informal language without using any words that may be colloquial or trite.

To write content online is different than writing on paper. Nielsen’s (1997) studies of online reading indicate that people do not read online but instead they scan, skim, surf and troll the web for content. Thus Web pages must employ scannable text such as highlighted keywords, meaningful subheadings, bulleted lists, one idea per paragraph, inverted pyramid style, and use half the word count. Reading Web pages is 25 % slower than on paper (Landsberger, 2001). The old number rules have changed for writing on the Web. Recent eye-tracking studies from Nielsen (2007) suggest using digits when showing numbers. The first instructional strategy is to learn how to write well for the Web.

The second strategy is to write for your audience. When you know your audience, you can plan useful learning experiences to ensure transfer of learning (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, Zvacek, 2006). Tailor the course to your particular group but always write for the masses. Writing for the masses means to write to the fourth and fifth grade level student regardless of the ages of your audience.

The final strategy is to carefully consider the use of multimedia such as graphics, diagrams, charts, animations, video, sound, games and simulations. Be sure the multimedia matches the learning sequence. For example, a video used to discuss how to perform a task would not be as effective as a video that demonstrates precisely how to perform a task. Chi, Bassoc, Lewis, Reiman, and Glaser, and Pirolli and Recker (1989) have found that most deep learning occurs when the learner performs or experiences the problems or carries out metacognitive tasks like reflection, self-evaluation, and assessment.

Animations in online instruction are effective. A recent study used subjects with no prior knowledge of the particular functions. They used the animator to demonstrate for half the group and read a section of text and answered questions for the other half. The group using the animator showed statistically significant improvement (p < 0.05) over the groups reading the text (Gilmeyer, 1998).

Copyright and fair use laws that regulate educational materials such as print, still images, audio recordings, video recordings, graphics, charts, and diagrams, actually broadens instructor’s legal use of copyrighted materials. The Technology, Education and Copyright Harmonization (TEACH) Act of 2002 allows instructors to use copyrighted content during online instruction without permission from or paying royalties to the copyright owners. However, materials used in a face to face classroom are not the same as materials used in the online classroom (Florida State University, 2007). Intellectual property might include tangible and intangible products of the author so it is therefore vital to carefully consider using any multimedia or content that is questionable as to its copyright.

Step Six: Assess the Course and Student Learning

The online course is actually in pilot mode at all times. Assessing the course should occur the entire time the course is made available to students online. Take suggestions from users of your online course with grace. Students become instant evaluators if they don’t understand content or if the course is not functioning properly. This is an excellent means to evaluate your online course and maintain integrity. Any content that is placed online must be maintained even if you use a learning/course management system (LMS/CMS) such as WebCT, Blackboard or Moodle. If you author it yourself with, say, Authorware, Quest or ToolBook, or if you simply use an html Website to deliver your course, maintenance is vital. Be responsible for the quality of your course. Links break, hyperlinked sites change and you must be sure all content is “working.” If your links are broken or if the links are not connected to sites that have integrity, you will loose credibility with your students.

What good is a course if you don’t test students to determine what they have learned? Tests are different from quizzes. Tests go at the end of course and quizzes can be provided throughout the course as measurement of how well students are progressing. It is very helpful to students to provide quizzes or self checks along the way so students are made aware of what is important to remember for testing at the end of the course. There are many ways to build tests and quizzes. Available on the Web for free are test generator Web sites where test questions can be entered into a form then a usable test is generated which can be copied and pasted. Answers can be viewed with a click or graded from a file automatically sent to the instructor. If you prefer technical support, you can purchase testing software for around $30.

Test to the objectives of your online course. If your first objective is to design a one-page Web mini lesson but the test is multiple choice, students are confused as to what they were supposed to learn. If you have analyzed the tasks of the course content to be delivered, then you can determine what the tasks are that students need to be able to accomplish (Ying & Zeng, n.d.).

Online students need lots of feedback; academicians equate this to the concept of online interactivity. Interactivity entails communication between the student and the instructor. You will need to consider how to use images, animations, video and simulations that create interaction that facilitates comprehension (Blecha, 1991). It is important to engage students in the Socratic dialogue with interactive questions and answers leading to expected mastery of the learning objective. Vary the level of complexity of problems so that some involve only recollection of facts and arguments from the text, whereas others require the student to examine a problem and still others require the student to synthesize the techniques (Daniel, 1999).

Since the Web is not print, Web pages may render differently for different users depending on their browser type. Suggest to students which browser works best. And if you have never viewed an online course before, here are a few examples: http://www.germanfortravellers.com/, http://ce.byu.edu/courses/hs/sample_comms235/public/start.htm, or http://www.engenderhealth.org/res/onc/. Also you might try the Digital-Teacher at http://www.digital-teacher.com/index.htm.

References

Blecha, B. (1991, Winter). Economic pedagogy and microcomputer software. Social Science Computer Review 9, 541-557.

Chi, M. T. H., Bassoc, M., Lewis, M. W., Reiman, P., & Glaser, R., (1989). Self-explanations: How students study and use examples in learning to solve problems. Cognitive Science, 13, 145-182.

Daniel, J. (1999, Spring). Computer-aided instruction on the World Wide Web: The Third Generation. Journal of Economic Education 30(2).

Florida State University, Center for Teaching & Learning (2007). The TEACH Act of 2002: How the law affects online instruction. Retrieved January 22, 2007, from http://learningforlife.fsu.edu/ctl/explore/bestPractices/docs/TEACHAct.pdf

Gilmeyer, O. (1998). Animation used to explain scheme functions. Retrieved 1/21/07 from http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/csed/doc_consortium/DC99/grillmeyer-abstract.html

Gunawardena, C. (1995). Social presence theory and implications for interaction and collaborative learning in computer conferences. International Journal of Educational Telecommunications 1(2/3),147-166.

Gunawardena, C., & Zittle, F.(1997). Social presence as a predictor of satisfaction within a computer mediated conferencing environment. American Journal of Distance Education 11(3), 8-26.

Landow, G. (2006 ). Hypertext, 3.0: Critical theory and new media in an era of globalization. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Landsberger, J. (Since 1996). Writing for effective Web pages. Retrieved May 31, 2007, from http://www.studygs.net/writingcontent.htm

Nielsen, (2007, April 16). Show numbers as numerals when writing for online readers. Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox. Retrieved April 26, 2007, from http://www.useit.com/alertbox/writing-numbers.html

Pirolli, P. L. & Recker, M., (1995). Modeling individual differences in students' learning strategies. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 4, (1), 1-38.

Savicki, V. & Kelly, M. (2000). Computer mediated communication: Gender and group composition. Cyberpsychology and Behavior, 3, 817-826.

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M. and S. Zvacek (2003). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (2nd ed.). Pearson Education, Inc.: Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.

Stanton, L., Eneman, S., Rehberg, S., & McQuillan, J. (2006). Storyboarding to success: How to begin building your online course. Retrieved January 9, 2007, from: http://www.uncc.edu/webcourse/sb/files_sb/Storyboarding_to_Success.doc

Ying Lu-Chen, J. & Zeng, M. (n.d.) Web-based T & I Training and Asian Languages. Retrieved January 24, 2007, from http://cits.hawaii.edu/lu/docs/vigo98paper.htm

Article Source: http://www.kenwallacecompany.com/articledirectory

Mary K. Cook-Wallace, PhD, teaches at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and performs research and instruction in distance education in a variety of settings. She provides cutting-edge resources, tools and direction to help your organization learn what it needs in order to remain competitive in today's global marketplace. Dr. Cook-Wallace can be contacted at 800-235-5690 or visit web.coehs.siu.edu/WED/wallace/

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