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Because the early planning stages of online instruction are crucial, Diane Chapman and Todd Nicolet propose a 'project approach' to course Development: a formal, team-based operation that makes use of consistent standards, trackable processes, standardized tools, and structured communication to facilitate technology initiatives of all sizes. This appears to facilitate scaling and the design and development of online instruction while maintaining the quality and integrity of the courses. Course design and development become more manageable when they are translated into repeatable processes and easy-to-apply tools.

This is very similar to Strategy 6: Apply Project Planning and Management Methods to Course Development in last weeks reading, "Effective Workload Management Strategies for the Online Environment".

This article talks specifically about the applications of the ADDIE model and the Dick & Carey Model for teaching about culture and intercultural communication. While the authors talk about an English as a Second Language course in Vietnam, their instructional design can be used for any course looks at cultural norms, including languages, linguistics, anthropology, sociology, and human health. Also, while their plans are not specific to an online course, their ideas transfer to an online or hybrid course quite easily. I was really pleased to find this article, especially as it supports my own ideas about using a hybrid of these two models to teach about intercultural communication. It makes concrete the theoretical assignments and organizational tips that I had in mind. I know I will come back to it often.

These guidelines focus specifically on hybrid course design and instruction beginning with Fundamental Questions, moving through Best Practices and also covering pitfalls and practices to avoid.

Hey, Ginny, I liked this post. It is bulleted and right to the point. It also brings up something that concerns me for our students, specifically tidbits for what to do (and NOT do) when students are enrolled in multiple hybrid courses. Thanks

This is a very helpful resource, as it is presented for the novice learner and has lots of basic details that I'm trying to make sense of. Thanks for sharing.

Universal Design in the ESL classroom

I like this list, Jane, though I feel the author Kregg Strehorn could have elaborated on some of the suggestions to explain more clearly what is meant and what a particular method entails. Maybe there was a strict word limit to which Strehorn had to adhere. In any case, some of the ideas are very interesting but also seem to be very time-consuming and potentially confusing. Don't get me wrong, I think it's wonderful that Stehorn reads and records some of the texts they are using in the class, reads and records and transcribes lectures, gives students different assignment choices, writes detailed class outlines and shares them with students, etc. All of these ideas make sense to me, but how do you have time as a teacher (and in my/our case instructor and full-time staff member) to do all that, unless you teach the same course over and over again? I am a great supporter and believer in universal design; plus, online classes in particular are, almost by nature, using a range of tools, thus serving students with different needs. Yet, Strehorn should discuss the amount of work involved in creating this course and should also address students' responses to this course as well as potential pitfalls in terms of student assessment. Perhaps Strehorn has done so in a different place.

If you are considering teaching online or are looking for ideas to freshen-up your current online course, you have come to the right resource. Designing for the online environment presents unique challenges, but it also opens a world of exciting possibilities for engaging students in their learning.

It seems to me that instructional design and course design models presume that every student in the class has to pursue the same objectives and should be taught in the same fashion; yet, as universal design ideas suggest, we may need to occasionally use different assignments and allow different learning approaches. And maybe, to take this idea a step further, learning in general should be personalized and course designs become more flexible. At least that's what some educational pioneers from Silicon Valley have declared. What follows is the introductory passage of a very recent New Yorker article, an article which is ultimately quite skeptical of the new models and of the role of technology in the classroom: "Seen from the outside, AltSchool Brooklyn, a private school that opened in Brooklyn Heights last fall, does not look like a traditional educational establishment. There is no playground attached, no crossing guard at the street corner, and no crowd of children blocking the sidewalk in the morning."

As the article goes on to highlight, the founders of the company AltSchool intend to break with traditional educational models. In the older model, the founder Max Ventilla asserts, the teacher is "an artisanal lesson planner on the one hand and disciplinary babysitter on the other hand." Not just that, the teacher also creates, following Common Core for example, standards and objectives for his or her class; one teacher quoted in the article claims that "by looking for standards to pull everyone up we are forgetting to address what the individual needs." This is where the AltSchool idea intervenes. This new school's approach "acknowledges and adapts to the differences among students: their abilities, their interests, their cultural backgrounds." How so? By monitoring students and collecting as much data about each student as possible, thus personalizing plans and projects for students (sound familiar? Ventilla worked for Google before founding AltSchool). While I think the idea of personalized learning is compelling, I also read with interest about the mixed results of AltSchool and other similar institutions - plus, the schools seem to be very utilitarian, focusing on what the student purportedly needs to succeed in the workplace (languages are supposedly rather useless, for example, because everyone will carry an electronic, speaking dictionary in 20 years from now). On a slightly different - and final - note, I was also intrigued by a quote from Daniel Willingham, education scholar at UV: "The most common thing I hear is that when you adopt technology you have to write twice the lesson plans. You have the one you use with the technology, and you have the backup one you use when the technology doesn't work that day." Congratulations! If you read this sentence, you have survived the challenge of reading this epic post.

This report offers some observations on the use of multimedia resources in online courses. The focus is more on course development (both time investment and quality of materials produced) than on student experience or learning outcomes, but this can still be a valuable tool for instructors thinking about whether (and how) to use multimedia in their online course designs.

faculty development specialists must pay close attention to the aspects of course development that are critical to the success of student learners. The likelihood of success is greatly increased when instructional design is integrated with the course's delivery tool. At ISU such integration is facilitated through the use ofWebCT, the course management system (CMS) supported by the university. Does Emory have such a tool?

Mobile Learning: A Designer's Guide to Fighting Learner Distraction One of the biggest issues in eLearning is distractions. The brain is constantly bombarded with stray thoughts even when users exert great self-control. The problem is yet more pronounced in mLearning, as devices themselves may cause distractions such as phone calls, email alerts, and the knowledge that the user could easily be doing something different.

I follow this blog although it is primarily for course design. In any case, this topic seemed relevant to our course design assignment.

This book has a chapter on creating a "student-centered syllabus" for an information literacy course, which could come in handy next week!

This paper describes a team based approach for on-line course development- focusing on team roles in course design using theoretical frameworks to guide development and evaluation. Team roles are identified using the Quality Matters rubric.

Smashing Magazine is one of my go-to sources for ideas when it comes to designing or publishing anything on the web. This piece is a very thorough how-to about producing and publishing a podcast. In my courses, I try to teach how to produce media, but also how to publish and circulate that media. I'm considering having students in my graduate composition practicum course develop a podcast related to the subject of each week's class.

The number of distance education courses offered by nurse anesthesia programs has increased substantially. Emerging distance learning trends must be researched to ensure high-quality education for student registered nurse anesthetists. However, research to examine distance learning has been hampered by a lack of theoretical models. This article introduces the Community of Inquiry model for use in nurse anesthesia education. This model has been used for more than a decade to guide and research distance learning in higher education. A major strength of this model lies in its direct applicability for guiding online distance learning. However, it lacks applicability to the development of higher order thinking for student registered nurse anesthetists. Thus, a new derived Community of Inquiry model was designed to improve these students' higher order thinking in distance learning. The derived model integrates Bloom's revised taxonomy into the original Community of Inquiry model and provides a means to design, evaluate, and research higher order thinking in nurse anesthesia distance education courses.

Here are some tips and tools for implementing universal design into online and blended courses.

This reference outlines the outcomes of an online course in genetics for NP students. I found this reference particularly helpful as it focuses on a science based online course. It can be done!

Comprehensive. Several individual topics covering course management to syllabus design. I couldn't find a date of publication, however. The website facultyfocus.com has other good blog posts.

Peggy, this was a great find. I thoroughly enjoyed reading these tidbits and tips. Thanks so much. The get acquainted idea and cultural diversity ideas were wonderful.

This is a great resource... I really liked the different ideas about how to organize the course.

Not surprising (to me), there are very few studies of online teaching in Linguistics. The authors of this article state that they found only one prior to this 2014 publication. Similar to other research on online teaching in general, they found that time management, communication, and detailed instructions are crucial for a successful course. They also discuss how attitudes toward technology play a significant role in course success.

An interesting question on whether courses have outlived their usefulness online.