Designing your online course

31 October - 2 December 2012 Book now

 

Guiding you through the decisions involved in preparing a course for online delivery.

This is the third in a series of three courses, which together will help you prepare for planning and teaching online courses.

• Teaching online courses
• Extending your online course
• Designing your online course

It is increasingly common for higher education courses to be developed and converted to online versions in order to reach new markets, meet the needs of work-based learners or provide a route into higher education.

This short, practical course will assist you with some of the decisions you need to make once you have decided to run a course online, including designing activities that engage students, selecting and reusing content, choosing tools, and evaluating how the course meets your learners' needs.

You will be supported through a series of scheduled activities by selected key readings, specially developed course resources and course tutors. The course tutors are all experienced and skilled online tutors, who have direct experience of preparing and teaching online courses. They will support you  in the development of your own course plan and in the processes of communicating and collaborating online.

This short course aims to:

• Support you through the decision making process of how to develop a course for online delivery.
• Introduce you to the literature on staff and student experiences of technology-enhanced learning and its implications for course and activity design. 
• Explore the infrastructure issues for course teams and institutions in developing and delivering online courses.

Expected learning outcomes

By the end of this course you should be able to:

• Design learning activities and assessments to successfully engage online learners.
• Assess the technologies available and make informed choices about which tools to use.
• Identify and locate content and resources for using and reusing in your courses.
• Evaluate how your courses meet your learners’ needs.

Course participants

This course is designed for teachers and trainers from all education sectors and all disciplines. We welcome international participants. Reliable and regular access to internet services is a pre-requisite. This course will be of most interest to staff who have identified a new or existing course which they will need to prepare for online, distance and/or blended delivery. As we discuss the role of the virtual learning environment in some details, participants should have access to their own institutional virtual learning environment to work within.

Learning and teaching activities

Each course participant is expected to play an active part in the course. Each week you will be expected to work through some guided readings, record your thoughts, and share your work with others. There is a mix of individual and collaborative group activities.

• Week 1: Designing for learning and learners.

Introduce yourself and your learners, exploring notions of ‘online readiness’. What do you need to know about your learners to design an online course?

• Week 2: Learning environment

The role of the virtual learning environment and other tools in designing for learning, exploring notions of affordances and media types.  What interactions do different environments promote?

• Week 3: Activities and outcomes

In groups, you will plan a learning activity and represent your design in a form that can be shared with others.

• Week 4: Resources

You will find some resources from collections of open education resources to supplement your activity design. What issues do you need to anticipate to implement this course design?

Technologies used

Most of the communication will take place within the discussion forums of Brookes Virtual (the Oxford Brookes installation of Blackboard). However, other technologies are used and you should be prepared to try out a range of other tools, some of which may be new to you. Participants value the podcasts and synchronous web tutorials (using Wimba Classroom) although you should expect that it takes some practice to use these tools effectively.

Assessment

OCSLD online courses are not formally assessed or accredited. We do offer Certificates of Attendance to those who participate in each week’s learning activities. We expect that in order to participate in the course activities, you will need to set aside six hours a week.