An online course can meet minimum technical standards for course design, yet fail to measure up in a “cognitive walk-through.”

—R. E. Youger and T. C. Ahern

 ONLINE COURSE DESIGN STANDARDS

Probably the best way to prepare to teach an online course is to take a couple of online courses yourself and experience them from the student’s perspective. But whether or not you have, the most important guideline to follow is to ensure tight coherence, or alignment, among all your course components. For example, you should be able to take any assessment item, whether an assignment or a test item, and match it up to a course outcome. If you can do this, you can improve learning as much as fourfold (Cohen, 1987; Squires, 2009). We also have some not-so-surprising evidence that online students choose what content to study based on what they think will make a difference in their performance on assignments and assessments, and they will simply ignore the rest (Murray, Pérez, Geist, & Hedrick, 2012).

Aligning all parts of your course will help your students achieve your intended learning outcomes and make a positive impression (Delaney, Johnson, Johnson, & Treslan, 2010; Fink, 2013; Lee, 2014; Moore, Downing, & York, 2009; Peterson & Cruz, 2004; Reisetter & Boris, 2009; Sun & Chen, 2016; Wiggins & McTighe, 2011). These research findings anchor the online course standards we review here. You can make more of your courses than what the standards mandated by educational institutions and accrediting agencies require, but these standards furnish a set of quality checkpoints. Some are the same as for face-to-face classes, and others apply to your use of technology and your digital rather than physical presence in your online classes. Some campuses have their own sets of standards, some outsource quality review to a separate organization, and some have no published standards at all.

Following are lists of the standards from a sampling of colleges and universities and accreditation agencies. We then lay out the common checkpoints for quality.

Examples of Colleges and Universities That Set Quality Standards

• Quality Matters rubric, copyrighted by MarylandOnline, to which many colleges and universities subscribe by paying a fee (Quality Matters Higher Education Program, n.d.; Roehrs, Wang, & Kendrick, 2013)
• California State University campuses (Quality Online Learning and Teaching, n.d.; QOLT program background, n.d.)
• Illinois Online Network (Quality Online Course Initiative, n.d.)
• Grand Rapids Community College (GRCC Distance Learning Standards, 2015)
• Purdue University Fort Wayne (formerly Indiana University–Purdue University Fort Wayne) (IPFW Online Course Design Standards, 2016)
• Pennsylvania State University, which ranks as a top online bachelor’s degree program (US News & World Report, 2016; Web Learning @ Penn State, n.d.)

Examples of Accreditation Agencies That Set Quality Standards

• Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (2016)
• Council of Regional Accrediting Commissions (2011)
• Commission on Colleges–Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (2000, 2011, 2014)
• Distance Education Accrediting Commission (2016)
• Southern Regional Education Board (2006)
• Keil & Brown, (2014)—review of six US regional accrediting commissions and two national accrediting organizations

We also present an integrated summary of the basic expectations for online course quality in exhibit 3.1.

 PHASES OF COURSE DESIGN

Procedural templates for instructional design typically display a linear process: you start at one step, complete it, then start the next, complete it, and move on, one step at a time (Dick, Carey, & Carey, 2015). This is a proven methodology (Salifu, 2015). But in practice, some phases occur cyclically or simultaneously (Smith & Ragan, 2005). You may return to a certain phase as you discover what course components work well or need improvement. Nonetheless, this simple model, as shown in figure 3.1, provides a well-established grounding in essential phases of course design.

Analysis begins after determining significant learning (see chapter 2). It proceeds with ensuring that outcomes, activities, and assessments lead to the vision of significant learning. Start with a wide-angle view of the vision and then zoom in to other parts of instruction with a general-to-detailed and simple-to-complex organization of all course lessons (Reigeluth, 1999, 2007). Should the sequence of the lessons be chronological, hierarchical, processual, procedural, spiral, or something else? At each stage of analysis, decide how one part of a course fits with the wide-angle view, and design every part so that students’ final grades reflect their achievement of one or another learning outcome. The order of topics also affects how students learn (Ritter, Nerb, Lehtinen, & O’Shea, 2007), a topic we address in chapter 4.

 STRUCTURING YOUR COURSE

Students see and value your effort in course design, choice of content, and relevance of assignments (Morrison & Anglin, 2009). Explicit organization and clearly labeled segments reduce student anxiety, help students better understand the learning process, and facilitate their time management (Briggs, 1977; Fink, 2007; Lee, Dickerson, & Winslow, 2012; Martin, 2011; Reisetter & Boris, 2009; Savenye, Olina, & Niemczyk, 2001). Indeed, clarity of structure is a hallmark of outstanding online course design (Dooley, Lindner, & Dooley, 2005; Dyckman & Davis, 2008; Helms et al., 2011; Lee et al., 2012; Reisetter & Boris, 2009; Simonson & Schlosser, 2009; Simonson, Smaldino, & Zvacek, 2015; Smith, 2014; Welch, Orso, Doolittle, & Areepattamannil, 2015).

Course Design Structure

Students benefit from a clear content focus and well-crafted titles for each week, module, or lesson (Reisetter & Boris, 2009). For example, Week 1: Chapter 1 conveys nothing about content. In contrast, Week 1: The Medical vs. Psychosocial Model indicates that students will compare two models in a given week and time frame. Some instructors prefer module or lesson rather than week to make it easier to adapt to changes in schedules, such as a fifteen-week semester format and a six-week summer session format for the same course. Use of a calendar tool or listing of weekly dates along with topic titles helps students plan their time, such as Module 1: The Medical vs. Psychosocial Model [August 6–12]. Beyond titles and time frames, displaying relationships among weeks also helps, even when labeling course sections as modules. Methods for figuring out the best way to structure a course include these:

• Making outlines
• Developing a concept map
• Making notes on colored sticky papers or index cards that you can easily rearrange
• Making a graphic of the course structure (see figure 3.2 for an example)

A simple flowchart also supports the structure of course design, as displayed in figure 3.3. This flowchart starts with a course overview followed by weekly previews and summaries to build bridges between chunks of content (Smith, 2014). These connections not only show the course structure but also allow students to see the progression of the topic they are studying. Include the following sections:

• An overview to introduce the whole course (a few sentences giving the bird’s-eye, wide-angle view)
• A preview for each unit and week (one or two paragraphs or a short bulleted list of the week’s focus)
• A summary of how a completed week or module relates to the upcoming one
• A summary for the end of a unit and its connections to the upcoming unit

The Graphic Syllabus

The most elaborate and informative graphic for showing relationships among topics is the graphic syllabus. Not to be confused with the standard text syllabus, it is a content-focused flowchart, graphic organizer, or diagram of the sequencing and organization of the major course topics through the term. Figure 3.4 shows an example.

Along with clarifying the complex connections among topics, a graphic syllabus provides the big picture of your course content—the structure of the knowledge as an integrated whole and a cohesive system of interpreting phenomena—giving students a deeper understanding of the course material than they would otherwise have (Medina, 2008; Vekiri, 2002). Because it is a relational graphic, it influences how students organize learning content (Clark & Mayer, 2011). The knowledge structure enables them to better process, comprehend, and retain the material (Marzano, 2003). That structure is what prior knowledge is all about. New material is integrated not into an aggregate of facts and terms but into a preexisting organization of learned knowledge (Ausubel, 1968; Baume & Baume, 2008; Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999; Carlile & Jordan, 2005; Hanson, 2006; Svinicki, 2004; Wieman, 2007; Zull, 2002, 2011). Acquiring the discipline’s mental structure of knowledge advances a learner from novice toward expert (Alexander, 1996; Bransford et al., 1999; Chi, Glaser, & Rees, 1982; Royer, Cisero, & Carlo, 1993).

A graphic syllabus has other learning benefits as well. It reveals why you organized the course content the way you did. After all, you put substantial time and mental effort into your topical organization, but students, who have no background in the field and no command of the vocabulary, cannot possibly follow your sophisticated logic. Figure 3.4 shows the conceptual relationships using spatial arrangements and arrows. It also cues the associated textual information, which means that simply recalling the shape of the visual can help a student remember the words within it. A final learning boost of the graphic syllabus and graphics in general is their ability to communicate better than text across cultural, language, and ability barriers (Tversky, 1995, 2001). They can increase the accessibility of the materials and help us meet the learning needs of a diverse student population.

A graphic syllabus may notate the calendar schedule of the topics, the major activities and assignments, and the tests. But however much information it contains, it cannot include everything that a regular text syllabus should, so it is meant to be a supplement, not a replacement for it. Nilson (2002, 2007) provides many more examples and much more information about the use of the graphic syllabus.

In designing any graphic or part of your course, avoid cognitive overload (see chapter 4). The exact size of a chunk or segment of learning depends on the kinds of practice, the degree of difficulty, and the amount of content delivered at one time (Hung, Randolph-Seng, Monsicha, & Crooks, 2008; Reisetter & Boris, 2009). Course chunks that are too large inhibit learning. Segmented chunks reduce complexity, prevent students from feeling overwhelmed, and make the content easier to grasp, even if the amount of information remains the same (Clark & Mayer, 2011). Then organize the chunks into a logical sequence of meaningful interrelated sections.

 COURSE TEMPLATES AND MAPS: AIDS TO COURSE DESIGN

Although the LMS comes with default course menus, they may not make good instructional sense. Several campuses use online course templates to create a more logical organization and set of names or labels for course areas and course menus. In addition to these kinds of templates, course maps help you plan all the essential course components before building them directly into the LMS.

 WRITING AND SEQUENCING LEARNING OUTCOMES

Aligning your learning outcomes with a vision of significant learning deserves your utmost attention (see chapter 2). The outcomes state what students should be able to do or perform to demonstrate learning, such as, “The student will be able to classify given rocks as igneous or metamorphic,” or, “The student will be able to identify the parts of a computer system.” As identified in the basic standards for online course design, outcomes should be:

• Measurable
• Student-centered
• Listed in the syllabus and other places at the course level, for each unit or module, and at the lesson level
• Connected to program competencies, degree goals, general education outcomes, and professional accreditation standards

Measurable outcomes center on action verbs (e.g., define, classify, construct, compute, design, assess) rather than nebulous verbs reflecting internal states that cannot be observed (e.g., know, learn, understand, realize, and appreciate). They should also specify conditions under which the student’s performance will be assessed. For example, will the student differentiate among and classify igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks in writing or orally, and will the rocks be actual samples, or drawn, or photographed? Will the student identify parts of a computer system on a diagram or in an actual computer? Two sets of examples contrast vague versus explicit learning outcomes.

• Example Set 1 (Clair & Baker, 2000, cited in Heywood, 2005, p. 21):
  • Vague: “At the end of this course in Engineering Graphics, the student will know how to use a computer-aided-design (CAD) software package.”
  • Explicit: “At the end of this course in Engineering Graphics, the student will be able to draw a multi-view representation of a solid object using a computer aided-design software package.”
• Example Set 2 (Dick et al., 2015, p. 130):
  • Vague: “The student will be able to lead group discussions aimed at solving problems.”
  • Explicit: “During simulated problem-solving meetings attended by master’s students in the leadership department and held in the department’s conference rooms, the student will successfully lead group discussions aimed at solving given problems.”

We tend to display our learning outcomes to students in a list, but this fails to represent the relationships they have to each other. In fact, outcomes later in a course build on earlier outcomes, making a course a true learning process. A flowchart of the learning process through which you plan to lead students is called an outcomes map. Instructional designers start with this same type of map in developing the instructional task analysis for any course. It is the most important part of the design process (Dick et al., 2015; Jonassen, Tessmer, & Hannum, 1999; Smith & Ragan, 2005).

The outcomes map illustrates your course design to students, making their learning process evident in visual form. It starts with your early foundational outcomes (those critical during the first part of the course), progresses through your mediating outcomes, and finally arrives at your ultimate (end-of-course) outcomes. It visually represents the sequence, flow, and cumulative progression of the skills and abilities that students should be able to demonstrate at various times during the course. It shows students how achieving one or more outcomes should enable them to achieve subsequent ones, and it orients them to your course more effectively than a linear list does (Nilson, 2007). You can provide your students with your outcomes map as part of the orientation to your course, whether it is fully online or in a classroom course with technology support. Figure 3.5 shows an example.

Learning outcomes represent our top-priority content and abilities for our students to master (Anderson, 2002; Fink, 2013; Youger & Ahern, 2015). Don Slater in the College of Science at Technology at Georgia Southern University started with the major topics for his Site Construction course. Then for each topic, he created a list of tasks students should be able to accomplish by the end of the course, such as, “Use a hand level, Jacob staff, and folding rule to conduct a vertical survey” (Goodson, Slater, & Zubovic, 2015). Making his topic and task lists visible revealed some gaps and overlaps in what he was teaching and testing. This is precisely the kind of revelation that other faculty who do an instructional analysis experience. You can also start with an inventory of all previous assessment items used for a course, sequence them before mapping them to levels of learning, and then make adjustments to fill in the gaps.

For certain subject areas, professional standards mandate the outcomes that also should go into an outcomes map, as in the following examples:

In fact, professional standards and requirements can shape the whole design of an online course, as in the next examples:

 DEVELOPING VALID ASSESSMENTS

Instructional designers and teaching and learning scholars alike agree on this added leading-edge strategy: design your assessments at the start, before developing the instructional materials, to bring into sharp focus your analysis for your course design (Briggs, 1977; Dick et al., 2015; Fink, 2013; Gagné, Wager, Golas, & Keller, 2005; Simonson et al., 2015; Smith & Ragan, 2005; Wiggins & McTighe, 2011). In the basic online course design standards, the following requirements apply:

• Derive assessments directly from the learning outcomes.
• Administer short assessments of different types periodically throughout the course to enable students to assess their progress.
• Explain to students how completing assignments and assessments will help them achieve the learning outcomes.

All course design standards call for multiple forms of assessment, and students prefer their learning to be assessed a variety of ways (Battalio, 2009). As the following example shows, adding frequent short assessments also improves student learning (Sharpe & Oliver, 2007, p. 43):

There was a problem in the course [introductory chemistry] with a 73 percent overall pass. . . . The students had complained about the time lag for feedback on the eight practical reports and the inconsistency in quality of feedback and grading. . . .

The course was redesigned to include both high and low stakes [assessments]. . .  . The low stakes assessments were made available for a week, students were allowed unlimited attempts and their best mark was recorded. High stakes assessments were unseen and conducted under examination invigilation conditions in computer labs.

The pass rate improved to 93 per cent and student feedback and analysis of logs identified the low stakes assessments as being critical. Students completed each of the five low stakes assessments on average three or four times and received instant feedback that provided clues to the answer, but not the actual answer.

Student feedback was extremely positive and students identified the multiple attempts with feedback as highly motivating and helpful.

Assessments should measure the student performance they claim to measure. If you want to determine how well your students can do X, Y, and Z, then assess them doing X, Y, and Z. Hirumi (2009, p. 48) had this to say: “If an objective states that students will be able to list key concepts, assessments should ask students to list key concepts. If an objective states that learners will be able to analyze a case, the assessment should ask learners to analyze a case.”

Many different forms of assessment appear in resources like these:

• Bloom’s taxonomy (Bloom, 1956) for the cognitive domain, which contains excellent examples for different types of learning
• Classroom assessment techniques (Angelo & Cross, 1993)
• MIT’s Teaching and Learning Lab (MIT Teaching and Learning Laboratory, n.d.)
• Teaching at Its Best (Nilson, 2016)
• Teach the Earth (Science Education Resource Center, Carleton College, n.d.)
• Handbooks of strategies and examples for developing and validating test items (e.g., Haladyna & Rodriguez, 2013; Lane et al., 2016)

Beyond well-designed assessments, what about the possibility that students will plagiarize or cheat? Actually, despite such fears, online students self-report no more academic dishonesty than do classroom students (Beck, 2014; Weimer, 2015), and students themselves perceive opportunities for cheating in online courses as no greater than those in most classroom courses (Chiesl, 2009). But in an online course, strategic assessment design matters no less than in a campus classroom. To begin, cheating is less likely under the following conditions (All, 2011; Chiesl, 2009; Simonson et al., 2015):

• Assessments align with learning outcomes.
• The class and campus create a climate of academic integrity.
• Students receive frequent short assessments.
• Grades are based on achievement rather than a curve.

We suggest additional ways to minimize academic dishonesty in the following sections. But first, we consider the different kinds of assessment you might want to use and offer recommendations for designing them.

 MAPPING LEARNING ACTIVITIES TO OUTCOMES

All the learning activities in your course should be organized around your course outcomes so that you have no inconsistences in what you teach, how you teach, and what you assess. Follow the same line of reasoning for learning activities as you do for assessments: if you want students to learn to do X, Y, and Z, plan activities that give them practice in doing X, Y, and Z, starting with the simple and progressing through higher complexity. Recall the online course design standard to make sure that course materials are:

• Relevant
• Accurate
• Comprehensive
• Free of extraneous content
• Organized in a logical sequence of meaningful chunks

Learning activities must require action, so use activity verbs such as read, study, reflect, listen, view, watch, write, discuss, do, describe, explain, analyze, or evaluate. Calling their approach R2D2, Bonk and Zhang (2008) use read, reflect, display, and do as major organizing categories and suggest over one hundred online learning activities. Watkins (2005) offers seventy-five more online activities. Many of the assessments count as learning activities for your students (such as flash cards, quizzes with feedback, and peer reviews). These and other learning activities are in fact your teaching methods. Remember to include estimates of the time required to complete them.

Classroom faculty have several sources to turn to for guidance in deciding their learning activities (e.g., Ambrose et al., 2010; Davis & Arend, 2013; Fink, 2013; Nilson, 2016), and you can integrate most of these activities into online courses in digital, audio, or video formats (Hirumi, 2009; Jacobs, 2014; McLaren, 2009; Simonson et al., 2015; Vai & Sosulski, 2016; Watkins, 2005; Zayapragassarazan & Kumar, 2012). Examples include:

• Short lectures
• Student self-assessments
• Written reflections
• Quizzes
• Games
• Debates
• Discussions
• Demonstrations
• Short writing-to-learn exercises
• Analyses and critiques of artistic or intellectual work
• Presentations by guest speakers and expert panels
• Case studies and their analysis
• Role plays and their debriefings
• Online simulations and their debriefings
• Jigsaw, team-based learning, and most other forms of group work
• Surveys (for fun, reflection, or self-assessment)
• Field trips (real and simulated)
• Problem-based learning (including outside research)
• Student peer feedback and review
• Service-learning/community engagement
• Individual and group projects and presentations

In classes enrolling a substantial number of adults, you also can draw out students’ own experiences and knowledge in discussion forums, chats, blogs, and group work, and they will be glad to share it.

When deciding on learning activities, consider giving students practice not only in performing your learning outcomes but also in doing whatever your discipline does. If your field requires interpreting data, your activities should include practice in identifying types of data, implementing methods of analysis, and interpreting sample data sets. If it involves analysis of texts or documents, so should your learning activities. If it entails mathematical problem solving, provide students with process (step-by-step) worksheets, worked examples, and partially worked examples to reduce their cognitive load and scaffold their learning (Kirschner, Sweller, & Clark, 2006). Recall the online course design standard to use best practices in the discipline and online instructional design.

Your choice of activities should also tie into your decisions about significant learning. The following examples describe learning activities that can foster significant learning (Fink, 2013, pp. 175–176):

• Nursing—cultural issues in childbearing: Students view films and read books to explore the ethical and cultural issues of childbearing for women and their families as well as for the nurses themselves.
• Different perspectives on the environment: Students keep journals on their personal experiences with nature while reading varied and often conflicting views on the relationship between people and their environments.
• Art history—myth, religion, and art: Students work on weekly problems that explore the relationships between spiritual beliefs and artistic works, drawing on material from different world cultures and historical periods.

Do consider the time required for your activities so that you anchor your plans in your course’s class time expectations, such as contact time of three hours per week for a three-credit course (Vai & Sosulski, 2016). Giving students choices of activities and assignments can increase their learning and motivation.

 CHOOSING ONLINE COURSE CONTENT

Online courses require different means of content delivery from classroom courses. Handouts need to be posted in electronic form. Movies may not be legal to show online (see the “Online Copyright Guidelines” section). And long lectures and presentations will fail because students stop viewing and listening after about six minutes. This phenomenon parallels McKeachie’s earlier classroom findings about inattention after five to ten minutes (McKeachie & Hofer, 2002). In online classes, such student inattention becomes explicitly visible through electronic monitoring of activities and questions from students about what has already been covered in a long presentation.

Consider your own technology skills when choosing how to present content. Recall the online course design standard for knowing how to use the tools you expect the students to use. If you are just getting started in online teaching, use technology and media you are already comfortable with, and consult with your technology support team or instructional designer on how to make these fit well in your LMS. The quality of your students’ learning experience relies less on using a lot of media and more on the coherence of your course, your instructional design strategies, the clarity of your course structure, the organization of your modules and lessons, your choice of meaningful titles and labels, and the ease with which students can locate course areas and materials (Moore et al., 2009; Reisetter & Boris, 2009; Sadik & Reisman, 2009). The media matter only to the extent that they can support and engage learning (Clark & Mayer, 2007, 2011; Daniel, 2011).

In making your initial choices about content, consider the following questions (Zheng & Smaldino, 2011, p. 112):

• What content must be included, and what can be left out?
• What is the best way to sequence and organize the materials?
• What are the best media to present the material?

With online course sites, whether teaching fully online or hybrid, you have many resources and ways for delivering course content:

• Traditional textbooks. Generally an author or publisher holds the copyright, students purchase the textbook, and instructors build learning activities around the textbook. (Instructors and instructional designers can contact the publisher for a free preview copy.)
• Content-rich supplemental online publisher resources to accompany textbooks, such as Pearson’s Mastering Astronomy site (Pearson, 2016), for which students pay an access fee. You must password-protect access to any digital content sold with a textbook.
• E-textbooks, such as Wiley-Blackwell’s Environment and Society, which comes with companion websites of instructor and student resources (Robbins, Hintz, & Moore, 2014). Some faculty build their own e-textbooks to customize and align the content to their outcomes (Coussement, Johnson, & Goodson, 2016).
• Web-based multimedia and open-educational resources. You can find an untold number of online resources—scholarly articles, images, podcasts, videos (TED Talks, YouTube), animations, simulations, and more—for both content presentation and learning activities (see chapter 6).
• Personally recorded podcasts or videos. Be sure to divide up your video and audio lectures into five- to seven-minute segments. Recordings are not difficult to produce yourself and may be well worth it for your students’ learning (see chapter 4 for guidelines).
• Original content files added directly to the LMS. Figure 3.6 shows how an item with attached files might look at a course site.

 ONLINE COPYRIGHT GUIDELINES

Because you have many resources from which to draw when building an online course, you need to pay attention to copyright. How much attention depends on what material you use and how you use it. You probably already know that copyright law protects all creative work: literary (fiction and nonfiction), musical (including lyrics), dramatic (including accompanying music), choreographic, sculptural, pictorial, graphic, architectural, audio, and audiovisual (including motion pictures). Copyright law does not protect facts, ideas, discoveries, inventions, words, phrases, symbols, designs that identify a source of goods, and some US government publications (you must check on each one). However, we still have to cite the sources of our facts, other people’s ideas, and certain key phrases.

You can use some material more freely than others and need to take care to avoid copyright infringement. Let’s start with some basic legal definitions of free use, fair use, and public domain before looking at the restrictions on certain kinds of materials.

Free use means no license or written permission from the copyright holder is required to copy, distribute, or electronically disseminate the work. Whether a given case qualifies depends on three rather gray criteria: (1) your use is fair use, (2) the material you wish to use is factual or an idea, and (3) the work you wish to use is in the public domain.

In general, fair use allows limited use of materials for purposes of teaching, scholarship, research, criticism, comment, parody, and news reporting. Legal determinations of fair use are made on a case-by-case basis. The amount and significance of material used from the protected work also figure into the determination. A tiny amount should not raise concerns unless it is of substantial importance—such as the heart of the copied work, a trademarked logo, or content that would harm an author’s or copyright holder’s sales market.

Public domain is a clearer legal concept but is sometimes redefined. A work published in the United States is now in the public domain if (1) it was published on or before 1923, (2) ninety-five years have elapsed since its publication date if it was published between 1923 and 1977, or (3) seventy years have elapsed since the author’s death if it was published after 1977. However, if a work was published between 1923 and 1963 and the copyright owner did not renew the copyright after the twenty-eight-year term that once applied, the work has come into public domain. Corporate works published after 1977 enter the public domain ninety-five years after publication.

 THE SYLLABUS: WHAT TO INCLUDE

Your syllabus gives students their first impression of both your course and you as their instructor, so it merits careful development. When you design it well, it becomes a central part of your online course orientation. Within it, you can make the overall course design and structure clear to students as required in online course design standards. Here is an annotated list of what your students really want to know: policies, assignments, and grading methods (Doolittle & Siudzinski, 2010). These items can also help you detail your course map. Of course, follow the topical requirements, organization, and template that your institution requires.

1. Basic course information: the course number and title; any required or recommended prerequisites for enrollment, including the instructor’s permission; credit hours; the days, hours, and way to access any synchronous meetings; directions on how to access the course LMS site and locate the LMS folder of online course materials (e.g., exercises, assignments, exams); and contact information for help with technology and software issues. State the time zone you are using since some online students may be in a different one.
2. Information about yourself: your full name and title; the way you wish to be addressed; your e-mail address; and your home page URL (if you have one). If you will use Google Hangouts, Skype, FaceTime, or other telecommunication software for office hours, provide your address. (Conversation may be a more efficient way to help the students understand the material than any kind of text-based electronic exchange.) If you decide to give students your home or cell phone number, you may wish to limit calls to certain days and reasonable hours. Also specify the days and hours that you will be answering their e-mail so that they do not expect you to be on e-mail 24/7. You also may wish to add a department e-mail address or phone number.
3. Similar information about others supporting the course, such as a teaching assistant or librarian.
4. A briefly annotated list of required materials such as readings, podcasts, and videos: books (including edition and price); online materials (with their URL or LMS folder locations); reasons for using these materials; and copyright limits. Work ahead of time with your bookstore for course materials.
5. Any other materials required for the course, including cost estimates and where to find them. (Don’t forget eBay and Amazon.com.) For example, some science labs require students to buy sets of lab equipment. Art and photography classes usually expect students to furnish their own equipment, supplies, and expendable materials. If special types of calculators, computers, or software are called for, these too deserve mention. If the materials will not be used immediately, specify when they will be needed in the course.
6. Supplemental materials—students want these even if they do not use them (Reisetter & Boris, 2009).
7. A course description, which may be as brief as a few lines describing the content or the full catalogue description. However, you might want to elaborate on the organization or flow of the course and your rationale for it. You may even want to mention topics the course will not cover if previous students have held mistaken expectations.
8. Your student learning outcomes for the course. These should include not only your ultimate outcomes but also your major mediating and foundational ones. Better yet, draw an outcomes map for your students to show them the learning process you plan for them. Review it to see that your course targets all six of Fink’s (2013) dimensions of significant learning (Palmer, Bach, & Streifer, 2014; see chapter 2) and has solid assessable learning outcomes. You do not want students to interpret your outcomes as binding promises to them because students have to apply themselves to achieve these outcomes. Therefore, consider adding this caveat or similar disclaimer:

   (1) Students may vary in their competency levels on these outcomes, and (2) they can expect to achieve these outcomes only if they honor all course policies, complete all assigned work in good faith and on time, prepare adequately for quizzes and exams, and meet all other course expectations of them as students.

9. A list of graded course requirements and breakdown of your grading scale, such as the number and point values of homework assignments, student peer feedback, discussion boards, chats, quizzes, tests, papers, graphics, and projects. If you expect students to participate in discussion boards, tell them so. State if their lowest-scoring work can be thrown out. Explain the grading system you will use (which we hope is criterion referenced), along with percentage breakdowns (e.g., 91–100 = A, 81–90 = B, and so on). Describe the types of homework assignments and quizzes and tests, including the types of items or essays. Also explain why you are assessing the way you are and how your assessments map onto the learning outcomes (Palmer et al., 2014).
10. How major assignments will be evaluated: with an atomistic key of many separate elements, a holistic rubric, or a multicriterion rubric. You might briefly identify the rubric criteria. Also explain your policies regarding revisions and extra credit. To prevent frivolous grade protests, state in the syllabus that you will deal with a protest by regrading a student’s entire work because if you made a mistake in one place, perhaps you made one in another. Or require that students submit grading complaints in writing, tying their justification to specific locations in the readings, podcasts, videos, or your discussion board comments (dated) within forty-eight hours.
11. Your policies on missed or late exams and assignments. Your LMS has electronic monitoring tools for viewing when students enter and participate in a course. Students may have good reasons for getting a late start in the class or missing a discussion due date, an assignment deadline, or a test, and you should indicate that you will ask for documentation. Identify what assignments or quizzes can have multiple attempts. State whether students can drop one of their grades during the term or can substitute their grade on one assignment or test for another they missed. If you assess penalties for late work, describe them precisely to prevent any later disputes. Check the academic regulations in your institution’s course catalogue so your penalties do not exceed what is allowed.
12. A statement of your and your institution’s policies on academic integrity, as well as how they apply in your course. Your institution’s policies are boilerplate statements that all but beginning students have seen and heard before, so they might very well belong in an appendix. Yours, however, deserve a more prominent place. This is an opportunity to build a strong explanation for what you mean by academic integrity. Otherwise your students may assume that you are naive or will look the other way. This statement should include the procedures you will follow in prosecuting violations and the sanctions a student may suffer. Consult your institution’s course catalogue, student handbook, or faculty handbook for details, and find out what your department or program may expect, require, and support. As noted earlier, if you plan to use a plagiarism detection tool, verify what databases it covers and tell students how it will be used.
13. A statement of your institution’s policies on Americans with Disabilities Act accommodations, which is probably a boilerplate statement required by your institution. For some students, you may need to arrange accommodations, such as longer time to take an exam. To design your course materials, you will need the required accommodations to meet some basic format requirements for accessibility, and these are in chapter 7. You should be able to get help from your institution’s disability services staff, information technologists, and instructional designers.
14. Policies on academic discourse, including an explanation of what kinds of behaviors you expect. Include “netiquette” (network etiquette) to set expectations for online discussions. Specify what constitutes violations (e.g., rude or harassing statements in online discussions) and penalties (such as deletion of offending messages or disciplinary actions). While such policies may seem controlling, some students are unfamiliar with the netiquette of online discussion and may not realize what comes across as flaming to others. Your policies can provide guidance and create a safe and respectful learning environment, especially if your content addresses sensitive issues. Phrase conduct codes in positive terms so that students know what you expect them to do, not just what you want them not to do.
15. Relevant institutional support services for online students, along with contact information, for help with technology such as course software, doing electronic library research, submitting computer assignments, writing papers or reports, and learning study skills. To better prepare students for online learning, you might give them an online readiness survey that includes adaptive learning feedback, such as Georgia OnMyLine “Online Education Readiness Assessment” (http://goml.readi.info/). You also can use its content to add to your own tips for student success.
16. A week-by-week course schedule with as much of the following information as possible: topics to be covered and the required readings, podcasts, videos, quizzes, exams, and individual and group assignments, along with their due dates.

17. A concluding legal caveat or disclaimer. Things may happen during the term to throw off your course schedule: widespread loss of electrical power, your own health issues, severe weather, or your students’ lack of preparation for the material you planned for them. Usually disruptions slow down the course and force you to diverge from your syllabus. Students may think they are not getting their money’s worth if you fail to get through the syllabus by the end of the term. In our litigious society, they may even file a grievance or threaten to sue. However, the courts have not recognized the syllabus as a legally binding contract on an instructor because the students’ registration for the course constitutes voluntary acceptance of the terms of the course, and the instructor maintains creative control over the content and methods of instruction (Kauffman, 2014; Reed, 2013). Still, it is wise to add this caveat or disclaimer regarding changes to the course at the end of the syllabus. This way you make your right to use your own discretion explicit. While this disclaimer mentions policies, it is best to avoid changing those unless they work in the students’ favor. Your statement might be as simple as the following one: “The above schedule, policies, procedures, and assignments in this course are subject to change in the event of extenuating circumstances, by mutual agreement, and/or to ensure better student learning.” Or it may be more comprehensive, such as the following one from Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW Syllabus Template, n.d.):

    This syllabus, with its course schedule, is based on the most recent information about the course content and schedule planned for this course. Its content is subject to revision as needed to adapt to new knowledge or unanticipated events. Updates will remain focused on achieving the course outcomes. Students will be notified of changes and are responsible for attending to such changes or modifications posted on the Blackboard Learn site for this course.

    These additional syllabus items may not be essential but they have merit:

18. Curricular requirements that your course satisfies, such as general education; various majors or programs; writing-, speaking-, or ethics-across-the-curriculum; and any other graduation or certification requirements of the program or institution.
19. Additional background information about yourself, such as the universities from which you received your degrees, other institutions where you have taught or conducted research, and your areas of research or special interest. After all, you will probably be asking your students for some personal and academic information. In addition, most students are keenly interested in you as a professional and a person and appreciate knowing something about you.
20. Your teaching philosophy. So many faculty write such a statement for job applications and reviews that you might want to make yours or an abbreviated version of it available. It can express your commitment to education, your hopes and objectives for your students, your knowledge of how people learn, the rapport with students you aim to develop, and your preferred teaching and assessment methods. With it, you can set a fruitful, congenial tone for the term.
21. Other available study or assignment aids. Students like to know if you plan to provide future study guides, review sheets, practice problems, or practice test questions.
22. Your view of the mutual rights and obligations between instructors and students (Habanek, 2005; Slattery & Carlson, 2005)—what you expect from students and what you will provide in turn. This sets up a friendly contract. You might include some motivating or inspiring statements and invite students to become co-learners with you (Slattery & Carlson, 2005). For instance, you explicitly create an encouraging, respectful online learning space by expressing your high expectations of students, your confidence in their ability to meet them, your view of them as competent and serious learners, and the relevance of the course materials to their professional and personal lives (Palmer et al., 2014). These statements can have powerful motivating effects, as chapter 5 documents.

Unlike a paper syllabus, an online syllabus can be dynamic, growing, and “living,” as Wilson (2008, p. 1), who invented the living syllabus, noted. In the first paragraph on his website for his History of Life course, he informs his students that he will be adding links, images, alternative perspectives on controversial issues, and other information on a weekly basis as the term proceeds, and he requires them to check the site at least once a week. This syllabus organizes course work into weekly folders, each with dates and content on Recommended Reading, Special Events, and Assignments. This weekly organization and consistent structure allow students to see at a glance the big picture of what will be covered in each week Designed as a weblog, the living syllabus is integrated with the College of Wooster course publishing platform, which also includes a home page, course notes, and preparation questions to support the course work contained in the syllabus. Wilson (2008) has two content-rich text sections (350–900 words) for each week’s topic—web resources and discipline-related news items—each studded with links to more information on concepts, proper names, and other subjects he mentions. The History of Life course and syllabus show the structure and organization for multiple weeks (http://historyoflife.voices.wooster.edu/course-syllabus/).

 ORGANIZING YOUR FILES FOR YOURSELF AND YOUR STUDENTS

You are more likely to build a well-organized course site when you create a good file organization system on your computer. Your organization should mirror what you anticipate your course site to look like. Your goal in designing your file organization is to facilitate navigation and avoid wasting your and your students’ time looking for documents, images, and the like. For your students, organize your materials into the home page, weekly folders, and other areas you plan for your course. For yourself, follow these procedures:

1. Make a separate folder in your computer system for your course where you can place all your files.
2. Create subfolders within this folder with labels designating each segment of the course, such as Home Page, Module 1 [title], Module 2 [title], and so on (or Week 1 [title], Week 2 [title], and so on). Within these subfolders, include your previews and summaries for each week, as well as the content materials you want to use.
3. Add another subfolder for communications in which you place the messages you anticipate sending out to students during the course. You might include templates of the kind of feedback you anticipate giving to students after their first academic discussion and major assignments.
4. Name files in an organized, technology-friendly way, such as mod01-introduction, mod01-video-list, mod01-reflection-questions, mod01-summary. Materials for the second module would be mod02-introduction, mod02-video-list, mod02-reflection, mod02-summary, and so on.
5. Place all images in a separate images folder and save the image files in a similar way, such as mod01-reflection-image.png. Keep track of image sources in a separate file and code them to the image file names so that you can easily cite your sources when building in your course site.
6. Do the same for your audio and video files.

   Here are other resources on file organization:

• How to Organize and Manage Your E-Learning Course Files, Rapid E-Learning Blog: http://blogs.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/how-to-organize-manage-your-e-learning-course-files/
• How to Keep Course Files Organized, Teaching in Higher Ed: http://teachinginhighered.com /productivity/keep-course-files-organized/
• Best Practices for File Naming, Stanford University Libraries: https://library.stanford.edu/research /data-management-services/data-best-practices/best-practices-file-naming

  Because reading online is not the same as reading in print, these tips may help your writing:

• Writer’s Web, University of Richmond’s Writing Center: http://writing2.richmond.edu/writing /wweb/blogging.html
• Writing for the Web, Hunter College: http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/communications/style-guide /writing-for-the-web
• Writing for the Web by David Walbert, University of North Carolina: http://www.learnnc.org/lp /editions/webwriting/705

How you enter content into your course site depends on what LMS you use. There are many LMSs, but you only need to be familiar with the one you are using unless you are part of a process to compare them. For the commercial ones, institutions pay a license fee—examples include Angel, Blackboard, Canvas, and Desire2Learn. Many choose an open source and free platform such as CourseWorks, Moodle, and Sakai. All LMSs require information technology for administration and support (Drouin, 2011), so you most likely will have on-campus help to learn how to use your institution’s choice. Each LMS has a slightly different presentation style, and the one you use may not look like the following examples, but their organization and style may give you some ideas about what you can do in your own course (these examples are not an endorsement of any specific LMSs):

• Drama of Diversity E01 at University of Colorado (https://ucdenver.instructure.com/courses/11412)
• Core Composition II E01 at University of Colorado (https://ucdenver.instructure.com/courses/11411)
• General Psychology Psyc 101 ECP at Bowie State University (video, 6:35; https://www.youtube.com /watch?v=t9YqYAG1cWI)
• U.S. History 2 at Seattle Central Community College (https://learn.canvas.net/courses/13)
• Introduction to Telecommunications at Grand Valley State University (video, 9:23: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZkIjPsdoYY)
• Small Business Management Course at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (video, 7:30; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFlVv5wiVSw&list=PLontYaReEU1voZsmm5gDVNT6imGKnLWTp&index=11)

You can search for other sample courses on the web with key words “subject” and the name of your LMS.

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