Exemplary Courses, Exemplary Designs, Templates Vs. Standards

Exemplary Courses, Exemplary Designs, Templates Vs. Standards
by Marie-Pierre Huguet, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (New York)
(plus two other people not there)
3 exemplary course winners
Templates and standards
Design recommendations

If you had to put the three academics on the rogers innovation curve:
One course innovator, one late majority, one laggard

Distance courses are shrinking for them, but blended courses are exploding

Course developers (instructional designers) – assigned to help academics and also some request help

Also have student workers, interns, and multimedia designers in the department
5 key components when designing courses

Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, Evaluate - [key question Why?]

If you don't have enough instructional designers in your institution, it is a good idea to ask an academic from another discipline to get a fresh perspective

One computer science course – distance learning, fully online – won in 2003
Tried to do innovative stuff for the time, weekly chat sessions online, added flash, audio to the course
-Student feedback was that it was quite poor
-Wasn't run by other people in the future – too techie

Next course
International Business, late majority lecturer
Blended course – mostly distance learners
Tried to do such a bad job that he would never be asked to teach a distance course again in his first year
Built a community of learners, integrated technologies into the learning
Students satisfied, reproduced by others

Final course:
Engineering lecturer
Hates using WebCT – finds it unintuitive
Made it work for what the gain could be for students, but disliked the tool
High quality discussion on the discussion board
Assignment submission, tests
Had an anonymous Q&A so students did not feel threatened asking questions
Students did really well on the exam – professor surprised by the results, though something was wrong
High student satisfaction and other lecturers want to use this type of course

Lots of moving icons on the sites

Students didn't want too standard WebCT courses, as it looked too similar to other courses
Why use template? Need good branding, easier to maintain, easier for students and instructors to use

Have a “shell” for their courses. Some did not have staff information on them

Uses layout and design to catch the students attention – the html editing ability of WebCT (who designs the html?)

Standards are base-line sites from the templates – when you take control of that site, you can do what you want with it, but you will probably have to go through the designers.

Modification of the templates to allow for instructor ownership, which meets certain standards

Write a design brief for how the course will work. What technologies will you use? How will students interact with the content? How is the learning broken up? Make a flowchart for how it will appear. About finding the best fit for what the academic does well. If you love to talk, try the discussion board. If you hate talking to others, don't use it (or be a lecturer...). Highlight your strengths in what technologies you use.

Overall a more entertaining presentation than some, though I still felt like more focus was being put on style than substance (a bit like Vegas). It seemed a bit too classic WebCTish for me, in that regard. I think the learning activities were at the heart of it, thankfully, but a lot of what she talked about was flashing icons and good layout and design.