Northeastern University Blackboard Online Course Design Designing a course for the online environment can be a daunting task, particularly if you do not have experience with internet-based education. The purpose of this document is to provide a framework for conceptualizing online course design, using Blackboard, at Northeastern University. Your own courses may not be laid out exactly as this document suggests, and that is fine. The idea is for you to have a place to begin, and a basis on which to build, when jumping into the course design process. So, without further ado, here are five steps to consider when creating your online course. 1. Define learning objectives for your course. This is a crucial step in the course design process. It is important to know and understand your learning objectives, or teaching points, well enough that you are able to list them concisely and completely. When you have compiled your list, you will have what amounts to a document of requirements. Students completing your course successfully will have obtained all knowledge and skills listed therein. Perhaps you re developing an online version of a pre-existing classroom course, one that already has a set of learning objectives. In that case, take a look at those teaching points and make sure that they seem complete, and that they ring true with your own viewpoint and experience. a) Important questions to ask yourself: i) What do you want your students to understand upon successful completion of your course? ii) What tasks do you want your students to be able to accomplish upon successful completion of your course? (1) Each appropriate answer to these two questions is a learning objective. b) Learning Objectives/Teaching Points Layout: Learning objectives are best arranged in outline form, grouped by lesson topic or subject. Each outline entry is a sentence that begins, The student will understand or, The student will be able to Qualifying information may be entered under any necessary teaching points, according to outline style. Once this document is completed, it will serve as a goals reminder for the entire course development process. 2) Categorize your learning objectives. Although you probably have your teaching points categorized (at least in your mind) by topic or subject, you now need to begin arranging them according to how they will best be taught. a) Important questions to ask yourself: i) In the classroom, which points would you bring out during a lecture? ii) Which points would you illustrate by asking questions in class? iii) Which points are covered especially well by the textbook or supplementary reading materials? by Jim Frey Page 1
iv) Which points would best be demonstrated using a learning by doing approach? 3) Plan your weekly lessons. Now that you ve made preliminary decisions as to how each aspect of your course material will best be delivered, you can build your weekly lessons or modules. a) Lecture Content you have categorized as lecture is lesson material that you may choose to put straight into your weekly folder modules. This is your way of speaking directly to your students, a la classroom lecture. This may include straight text, graphics, or documents, using Blackboard s Items and Learning Units. b) Classroom Questions Think about putting the best of these discussion questions into your Discussion Board, grouped by module or week. You ll want all of these to be healthy, meaty questions, designed to stimulate interesting, thoughtful discussion and debate. Keep in mind that you ll be able to enter the discussion periodically, steering it as you see fit, to best illustrate your teaching points. c) Text What do you want your students to read from the textbook? At what point? Will students read from the text first, then read your lecture, then participate in the discussion? Or should the text come second, as reinforcement to your lecture material? Is there some other way you d like things to happen? The choices are yours, and it s important that you have answers in mind to these questions as you re designing your course. d) Tasks What tasks do you want your students to perform? How will you verify that they have completed them? How will their performance be evaluated? Will their performance be evaluated in all cases? Is prior programming (e.g., developing an interactive Web site) required in order for the course to work? If so, are the resources present to accomplish it? e) Other important points to consider: i) Will the material in each lesson folder correspond strictly to time? (1) corresponding each folder to a particular week is preferable in the majority of cases ii) Will all modules be visible to users at any time, or is there a compelling reason for withholding some lessons until specific points within the course are reached? (1) While Blackboard allows you to date-restrict folders or individual items, so that they are only displayed when you want them displayed, this should be used only for specific reasons. It s generally preferable to have all lessons laid out from the beginning, so students may work ahead if they wish. The Discussion Board is an appropriate tool for pacing your 2002 by James A. Frey Page 2
students, so that they don t try to do all of the work at once and then take a vacation for the rest of the quarter. (See Discussion Board section below). 4) Create your lessons. You probably won t want to build your lessons in Blackboard at this point. That step should come at the end of the course development process, after you know exactly what you want to do. If you have your lessons planned out before you begin the Blackboard work, you ll most likely save yourself the effort of making changes later. While it s very simple to place content inside your Blackboard course, the going gets more tedious if you decide you wish to move material around and re-structure your lessons. a) The content of your course will dictate, to a certain extent, how you will manage your folders, but here is a general template to start with: Your folder titles should look something like this: Lesson 1: Lesson 1 Topic Covered (dates of Week 1) Lesson Description, if appropriate Inside each folder, here s an example of how you might wish to organize your items: What we ll cover this week: It is very helpful for you to lay out a concise, bulleted list of the topics to be covered in each lesson. This gives students a sense of where they re going, which makes the assignment more accessible from the outset. Reading Assignment: Most likely, each week s material will contain a reading assignment. It s up to you to decide whether you wish for the reading to come before or after your own lesson material. Lesson Notes: This is your chance to talk directly to your students about the lesson material, sharing your own viewpoints, experiences, ideas, stories, etc. Lesson notes often resemble a visual representation of a lecture. You may wish to include diagrams, audio clips, PowerPoint slides, or anything else that will enhance the experience. If your lesson notes are especially lengthy, you may feel more comfortable placing them inside their own folder, uploading them to BB as a Web page and linking to that page, or attaching them in a Microsoft Word document. Discussion Questions: Here s a good place to present the week s Discussion Board material, along with any expectations you have regarding their posts for 2002 by James A. Frey Page 3
this particular question. What s in Store: At this point, it's great to sum up what's been covered, while pointing toward what's coming next. You can recap the major points of the week's lesson, then explain how those points will be applied to the following week's material. b) Consistency is always a positive thing, wherever it s possible. If it makes sense, from the standpoint of the content, to keep a consistent format for each week s lesson material, that s terrific. However, consistency at the expense of logical presentation of course content is never good. If your course content organizes itself more appropriately in a different way for a particular week, that s fine. c) You may not wish to follow this outline exactly, but it s good to have it in mind as a framework. That way, you ll know why you re making the decisions you re making regarding course development and design. 5) Design your Discussion Board. Your Discussion Board is a crucial element of your course. Our prime enemy in an online learning experience is the isolation that participants feel as a direct result of the learning situation. Because there is no classroom experience, students and faculty tend to feel cut off from each other. The Discussion Board is the single most effective way to counteract that feeling. A healthy discussion encourages a sense of community. It also involves students with the content of the course in a healthy, engaging way. In addition, it is superior in some ways to classroom discussion because it allows students the opportunity to reflect and consider before putting their answers forth. a) Questions to consider: i) What questions do you want to use in your discussion? ii) What is going to be required of students? (1) It is strongly recommended that you include the Discussion Board in a Participation portion of students grades. (2) A common and effective requirement is for students to post, for each discussion question, a response of their own and a reply to someone else s post. These responses must be substantive. The more clearly you can explain your expectations regarding the Discussion Board (or any other aspect of the course), the better. iii) What style discussion will you be looking for? How formal should the writing be? Is there a specific format you want students to follow when posting to the Discussion Board? iv) How long should posts be? One paragraph? Two? (1) It s important not to allow DB posts to become too lengthy. This makes it difficult to read and respond to them concisely. If students need to be posting more than a page of text to the Discussion Board, it is 2002 by James A. Frey Page 4
recommended that they attach the text to the DB post as a Word document. v) How many posts are required of students per week? Per lesson/module? vi) How many questions will there be per week? One complex question? Three simpler questions? Will it vary from week to week? vii) How is the DB best used to teach the content of your course? (1) In some cases, such as with computer programming courses, it s more appropriate to use the DB as a forum for students to post problems and issues they ve encountered. They may then respond to each other s posts and help each other out. You may also participate as necessary. viii) Will all discussion forums be available from the start of the course, or will you develop them as you go along? (1) This is similar to the decision of whether or not to make all of your content folders visible at the outset of the course. Again, it s your call. (2) Some instructors like to keep certain discussion topics open only for a certain amount of time. For example, the discussion forum for a certain week may stay open only during that particular week. After that, the forum may be locked, so that no further posts may be introduced. That way, students may continue to read what s there but they may not post additional comments. 6) Build your course in Blackboard. This should always be the final step in the process. It s very tempting to build your course in Blackboard as it s being created, but in the long run, you re much better off if you ve finished planning first. a) While building your course, check your student s-eye view frequently. You accomplish this by clicking on the Course ID link on the top right corner of your browser window. If you make it a habit to view the course itself on a regular basis (as opposed to viewing your content within the modification tool), you ll be comfortable in the knowledge that your course appears and behaves in the way you ve envisioned. b) Proofread your course content! This is very important. The primary method of communication with an online course is the written (or typed) word. Misspelled words, improper grammar, or problems with formatting of documents will not sit well with students. c) Don t ever use the Display Until date-restriction function, unless it s required (e.g., for a quiz that can t be available after a certain day). Also, if you deem it appropriate to date-restrict your content so students can t see it until a certain time, please place a date restriction on the entire folder, as opposed to the individual items of content inside the folder. d) You may wish to consider using an HTML editing application, such as Dreamweaver or Frontpage, to design your course content. Once you have it 2002 by James A. Frey Page 5
formatted as you d like, you can take the generated HTML code and paste it straight into the content window of Blackboard. This can be quicker and easier than hand-coding your page formatting while working in Blackboard. When you use this approach, make sure you click the HTML radio button underneath the content text box. Conclusion Online course design can be a very rewarding experience. It s a terrific feeling to put everything together at the end of the process, and then see the finished product. It s even better once you see students participating in your course. It s often helpful to bounce ideas of other people while structuring a course someone who s not quite as close to the content may offer a different, useful perspective. An instructional designer will be able not only to answer your questions, but to help you conceptualize the structure and design of your online course. Have fun! 2002 by James A. Frey Page 6