Although the target readership is grade 6-12 instructors, I find the methodology in this article applicable to what we are trying to do. Give it a read and see what you think.

OK. Here is the other article I promised. My interest was to find out about the principle of redundancy, but this article is not just about that. Editor's Note : Effective online learning requires careful preparation, design, implementation, and follow-up. This article combines best practices from a variety of resources - research studies, publications, and discussions among online instructors. The analogy of a garden is used to reinforce practices that will ensure a successful "harvest!"

With this and another article that I will also post, I think I have found the answer to the question I posted on Bb discussion/reflection - is it better to be redundant or to be a minimalist? To quote from the other article, "in an online environment, redundancy is often better than elegant succinctness." To quote from this article - in Cybernetics, Norbert Wiener said, "We can hardly expect that any important message is entrusted for transmission to a single neuron, nor that any important operation is entrusted to a single neuronal mechanism." When teaching writing online, simply put, you should provide information to your students through multiple means.

This article seems a good (and brief) overview of issues we may encounter transitioning from face-to-face to online teaching. It is not limited to the question of workload, but it does report that online teaching takes up to 40% more time.

The 40% is for first time, and should decrease when we teach again.