As I begin another online course...

As I begin to design and teach another online course this spring, I am reminded again of how important it is to make each course interactive. By interactive, I mean that each part of the course must involve the participant/student and encourage them to continue and explore. If the course site is dull and uninteresting, the student must force themselves to return to the site. This negative experience not only affects their school work, but undermines your effectiveness as the instructor. At the end of the course, it may also affect student evaluations of you and your course. Here are some of my online teaching tips, which I am re-reading before I begin creating the structure of my new course:

• Design a welcome page with a photo of the instructor and a voice-over (audio file). This gives your course a personality and makes it more inviting.
  
• Make sure EACH part of your course site has clear, precise directions (duplicate them in several areas).
• Create different options for students with differing abilities (See the information on Universal Design principals).
• First determine the content you wish students to learn; then create assessments which will show those learning outcomes.
• Ask questions and get comments from other instructors! Peer Review!
• Add a weekly student survey to your course site....this will help you see what your students may be missing each week and then you can change your course to meet their needs!

If you add these notes to your course design practice, you may notice a difference in student learning.
mej:)

Integrative Learning

In AAC&U's new report, College Learning for the New Global Century, it suggests that integrative learning should be considered an "essential learning outcome." http://www.aacu.org/advocacy/leap/documents/GlobalCentury_final.pdf

What is integrative learning? One definition could be: Learning which allows students to focus on finding key points or threads of connection between and through various courses and programs. In Integrative Learning: Mapping the Terrain, Andrea Leskes promotes integrative learning for higher education courses and programs:

“Integrative learning is clearly important for today’s college graduates, who will face complex issues in their professional lives and in the broader society. In fact, it could be argued that in most fields except education—from the workplace to scientific discovery to medicine to world and national affairs—multilayered, unscripted problems routinely require integrative thinking and approaches.”

Integrative learning prepares our students for the future—whatever their future may look like; we know it will be quite different and require new skills. What do you think? Will you add integrative learning to your course outcomes? Your comments are welcome!