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Selecting Supplemental Resources: Personal Experience Insights
In our Personal Experience Insights series, members of the Everspring Learning Design department share first-hand accounts of creating online learning content and meaningful takeaways from their professional experiences.
Adult English Language Learners
Many existing best practices for course builds can be leveraged to support English language learners (ELLs). While designing your online course, consider ELLs and the diverse linguistic and cultural knowledge they bring to the classroom.
Introduction to Competency-Based Education
As higher education evolves to meet the needs of today’s diverse learners, competency-based education (CBE) is gaining traction for its student-centered approach and promises of affordability and workplace preparation. According to a 2020 survey, 128 unique institutions were operating a total of 1,057 CBE programs between 2018 and 2020, and 82% of responding institutions expected CBE programs to grow further between 2020 and 2025 (American Institutes for Research [AIR], 2021). While interest in CBE may be growing, most institutions remain in the early planning stages.
Best Practices to Support Students With Cognitive Disabilities
Cognitive disabilities are common among adults in the United States and are especially prevalent among young adults (Okoro et al., 2018). Such disabilities impact mental functions such as memory, attention, perception, and calculation, among others. As a result, students with cognitive disabilities may struggle with academic tasks generally—and online coursework specifically—in unique ways (Petretto et al., 2021; Reyes et al., 2022). Since online courses are often text-heavy, for example, students with dyslexia may find them more challenging to navigate than on-ground classes (Chen et al., 2015). Students with cognitive disabilities may also struggle with navigating inconsistent online course layouts, comprehending complicated directives, and engaging with non-essential course components. Finally, when online courses are large or impersonal, students with cognitive disabilities may have difficulty focusing on assignments and other coursework (The Best Schools, 2024).
Developing Instructional Materials
Once you have defined the learning objectives for your course, you can begin to develop assessments to ensure students achieve those objectives. Once you have created assessments, you can begin to develop materials to ensure students succeed on those assessments. This backward design process—which moves from objectives to assessments and finally to materials—is known as learning-centered instruction, and it directs every course task toward the development of certain skills and competencies. This piece focuses on the third stage of this process, the development of high-quality instructional materials, beginning with the idea that robust and engaging online courses contain a mix of created and curated content. Below, you will find guidelines for creating and curating instructional materials to help you achieve the optimal balance for your course.
Quizzes for the Multimodal Course
From trivia games to final exams, quizzing tools have a variety of uses for learning as well as assessment. Exams and quizzes have a particularly plentiful range of possibilities in a multimodal or hybrid course, where they can be administered synchronously or asynchronously. Research suggests that the presentation of a tool influences student behavior in response to the tool. When comparing two student discussion boards, one an ungraded discussion and one a graded replacement for a final exam, Cheng et al. (2013) found that students displayed more knowledge on the graded board but more evidence of learning on the ungraded board. The students who participated in the study were more likely to grapple with new ideas when the stakes were low but more eager to showcase topics they were confident about when their responses would have a greater impact on their grades. When considering quizzing tools, we recommend allowing your course goals to guide your usage.
Discussion Best Practices Guide
Discussions are an impactful way to build engagement and discourse in asynchronous online courses. When properly designed, discussions can encompass the three pillars of engagement: student-content, student-student, and student-instructor. Asynchronous discussions allow students time to reflect prior to participating, which can lead to deeper insights and richer discourse. Moreover, when participating in discussions, students have the opportunity to collaborate with others, participate in an online learning community, and gain insights from others’ unique experiences and perspectives (Ransdell et al., 2018). Facilitating multiple types of engagement in an online course can improve student motivation, satisfaction, and achievement (Dailey-Hebert, 2018).
Easy and Essential Online Course Elements
Transferring your course online opens a world of possibilities. In fact, you might be tempted to spend hours trying to locate and learn new educational technologies, or to rebuild your entire course in the learning management system (LMS). But while effective use of technology can certainly enhance learning experiences, it can also introduce obstacles for both faculty and students.
Backward Design
Backward design is, as the name suggests, a process for designing curricula, courses, and lectures by working backward from big-picture learning goals. The concept, introduced by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe (2005), suggests that instructors create assessments, activities, and course content that are explicitly aligned with the broader learning goals of the unit. This is different from the traditional content-driven approach to learning design, which focuses on course content first and only secondarily tries to align that content with learning goals.
Game-Based Learning Experiences
Game-based learning (GBL) is a learning experience, or set of learning experiences, delivered through gameplay or game-like activities with defined learning outcomes. GBL is often confused with gamification, which is the application of game elements to a non-gaming experience. GBL engages students cognitively, emotionally, behaviorally, and socioculturally (Plass et al., 2015). Many factors should be considered when designing GBL, including narrative, player positioning, and interactive design (Dickey, 2005).