Don’t treat your online course like a file cabinet, junk drawer, or that closet you’re afraid to open!
Is your online course over-loaded with PowerPoint files and 100s of “additional” resources?
Just because you can post it in your class doesn’t mean you should.
Start with your learning objectives. This document from Utica college can help you focus with learning objective verbs. Then map all of your course’s content to its learning objectives. If something is off-topic or over-covered, pare it down! If you find something that is dated or something that takes longer to read/watch/listen to than it’s worth, cut ruthlessly! Your learners aren’t paying you to give them the breadth of information Google would serve up. They are paying you to help them focus their time and attention. Your job is to help learners make the absolute most of their time.
Once you’ve made some hard cuts, look back at your learning objectives and how your remaining content maps to them. You might find a gap, or maybe even a few. Prioritize a few new items. Instead of making a quick video with bad audio quality, a script that’s a little rambly, and/or bad clip art images, ask for help (exttech@umn.edu) making pieces of content that will really help your work shine, and teach as effectively and efficiently as possible. Once you have a course and you’re ready to refine it, aim for the investment pieces - not fast fashion.
This feels almost like it was written for me. Great post. I've some work to do in a course that we build 6 years ago and needs paring down for sure. The "ask for help" link doesn't work. FYI.
ReplyDeleteThank you! And thank you for the note about the "ask for help" link. I added the email address in text, but you can also enabled your browser to open the link in your email. Here's an old post where Karen walks you through it: https://extquickbytes.blogspot.com/2015/09/google-tips-setting-default-email-links.html
DeleteThings look a bit different now, so just in case it's helpful, here's a more brief description from Google: https://support.google.com/a/users/answer/9308783?hl=en#:~:text=Make%20Gmail%20the%20default%20email,email%20links%20in%20Chrome%20Browser&text=Settings.,the%20Privacy%20and%20security%20section.&text=At%20the%20top%2C%20make%20sure,(recommended)%20is%20turned%20on.