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Instructional Designer Karen T. Kappe outlines a strategy for planning and prioritizing accessibility measures in online, hybrid, and in-person courses.
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When it comes to online learning, a taste of the unexpected may stimulate curiosity and delight, encourage students to test new ideas, and spark connections that lead them to integrate knowledge. But the line between inventiveness and disorganization is narrow. And deployed indiscriminately, course elements that defy expectations can create extraneous cognitive load that distracts from learning objectives, causes confusion, and diminishes the overall learning experience.
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Asynchronous discussion forums—and the “post once, reply twice” format—are frequently maligned by faculty and students. Instructors may perceive them as educationally ineffective and incapable of achieving desired learning outcomes, while students may view them as rote or forced. But the problem is not with the discussion forum itself—rather, it is that discussions often seem tacked on, or not intentionally constructed as integral components of a course.
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Online learning can add flexibility for instructors and students by focusing synchronous interactions just on the areas where they have the most impact on learning.
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How do I help my students learn online? If they haven't participated in a fully remote course before, your students may need guidance to stay organized and on-task. You can provide tools within your class to support that, as well as tips and resources on effective note-taking methods for online content. And don't forgot to facilitate peer engagement, so students don't lose the social and educational value of interacting with each other.
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Recorded lecture videos do not need to be highly produced or beautifully designed to be effective. Attention to 3 areas—setup, video length, and slides—can help you create asynchronous lectures that facilitate student learning, and that can be reused, reducing duplicated effort in future runs of a course.