Course Design Online

Multi-Modal Course (MMC) Design ensures that Canisius courses can operate entirely online, but can take full advantage of classrooms when available.

All faculty must be able to teach their courses online in the Fall semester because of the ever-present threat of a COVID-19 surge. MMCs are not strictly online courses in the traditional sense, since they are also capable of taking advantage of classroom presence, even on a limited basis. However, MMCs are based online, so that students and faculty can reduce risks of COVID-19 transmission in various ways, and even operate as an all-online class if COVID-19 surges and New York State directs that our campus be closed again.

In general, COVID-19 has compelled us to consider Resilient Pedagogy: teaching that can continue in an uncertain environment. Beyond the current pandemic, future public health concerns or changing climate and weather patterns might again impose limitations on our teaching, and we do well to create flexible teaching plans that feature mutually-supporting classroom and web-based means and methods. While the classroom is a crucial site for teaching and learning, we can substitute web-based activities when compelled to do so.

In this guide, you will find tutorials covering the mechanics of using various web-based tools for remote instruction. But faculty should seek every opportunity, as early as possible, to learn about online teaching, and develop a teaching plan that bases their courses in D2L. The Online Faculty Development Course will run multiple times throughout the summer, and at any time the COLI Guide to Teaching Online is available to all Canisius Faculty. COLI runs workshops and other trainings that cover a variety of web-based tools. These, together with other COLI resources for remote teaching, are great ways to understand and implement online pedagogy.

Course Content Online

We should anticipate taking full advantage of our classrooms, however they are available, but our courses must be able to operate fully online in COVID-19 closes campus.

Balance Simplicity with Effectiveness

When choosing the technologies you will use to teach online, either stick to D2L, or know why you are going beyond D2L.

All Canisius students should encounter their online course content in D2L, either built or linked there. This makes it easier for students to know how to complete their coursework at Canisius.

You may find, however, that you want students to read, watch, or do something outside D2L. For example, you want them to read from an online textbook, attend a class meeting via Zoom, or create a website, and none are native to, or can appear embedded within D2L. You might then provide links, or instructions for students in D2L that point them toward these resources.

If you wish students to use a toolset outside D2L, consider whether this imposes additional tasks such as creating an account, or learning a distinctly different software interface. This can be acceptable, if your course subject matter requires it, or students greatly benefit by it. But in any course, avoid adding lots of separate resources that require students to create accounts, download different apps, or learn a lot of software navigation and procedure, especially when these resources don't contribute major parts of your course process. Remember, your students are probably taking more courses than just yours, and if they have to learn and keep track of various systems, this may take away from, as much or more as support, their learning.

Simple, Reliable Communication

Choose few methods of communication, outline them to students up front, and stick to them. Here's an example plan:

• News Feed for regular announcements - text, audio or video. Let students know to watch this space in your class, so you don't need to clutter up their inbox with more emails.

• A "Frequently Asked Questions" (FAQ) asynchronous discussion topic within D2L, so you avoid having to repeat yourself in email.

• Email for 1-1 communications where the FAQ is inappropriate, and emergency class announcements.

• D2L Grades for all grades and feedback (which can be auto-transferred from dropboxes, discussions, and quizzes.)

Also include guidelines for communication beyond just the tech. You might state explicitly how long students may expect to wait for email replies, grades, or other communications. Or, you might tell them at what hours a day and days of the week you check - or do not check - emails.

After you have a plan, stick to it, and insist your students stick to it. You can decline to accept (or leave) phone messages, text messages, etc.

Signposting

Not every course activity can be mapped onto each week. Examples include deadlines for course-long projects, or special events such as a synchronous meeting. In those cases, decide how much lead time students need to prepare for these important dates, and install messages in the course that remind students to prepare for these.

Use consistently formatted names for any type of content or activity: headings, assignment, and even files. For example, if organized by week students should easily be able to identify the overall weekly folder, any regular subfolders, and the content or activities therein.

Groups

Use D2L's groups toolset to make certain content or activities available to different groups of students within your class. In MMCs, this is most handy for creating specific content relevant to students who are attending classroom classes, while making other content available exclusively to those who are attending your course online only.

Pattern Teaching

Beginning early in the course, students should encounter a consistent, repetitive format. Lessons, or modules should have similar and predictable duration, assessments, activities, and communication methods. Obviously content varies from week to week, and having special projects, evolving or even iterative coursework is possible. But for online students (and F2F students, too), routine course format is a big help.

Break Up Lectures

If you record lecture in video, break up your lectures into smaller video files. Often, you can find natural breaks in the content, and to stop the recording periodically adds little to the process. This has several advantages:

• If properly scripted, you can mix and match lecture parts for different courses.

• Students find it easier to navigate and re-watch lecture segments.

• Amidst your lecture portions, you can intersperse other active learning activities, such as quizzes, asynchronous discussion post assignments, and so on, to help students focus on and apply what they are learning.

For lecture and other videos, apply closed captions.

Online Assessment

In shifting from Face-to-Face to online teaching, it's easy to lose track of how much work you are creating for your students - and for you, in providing grades and feedback - as you create online assessments. For example, if you had classroom discussions in face-to-face classes, students had to prepare but they generated their comments in class. However, in online asynchronous discussions, students must compose their comments, and might naturally spend more time reflecting and writing. Added to this, almost everyone's lives are complicated by COVID-19 and social distancing. So anticipate that your students need to balance schoolwork with unanticipated family, work, or other circumstances.

As you craft assignments, quizzes, exams, discussion prompts, and other graded activities, always keep an eye on your overall course design, and how much work students will probably need to do each week and throughout the whole semester. One way to do this is to prepare an estimate, included in your syllabus, of how much time students should expect to spend on your coursework each week.

Assignment Design

Any tools or advice you can give students on how to organize their efforts, such as checklists, rubrics, sample "A"-level work, or a framework for managing a digital project, is very helpful to students.

Recognize that the Fall 2020 semester will be extraordinary. You and your students may occasionally struggle with schedule conflicts, unforseen circumstances, or other unpredictable events. Hold students accountable (using the due dates tool, as mentioned above), both to pace your own assessment responsibilities, but also to help them develop time management and personal organization skills. But also be a little more flexible on deadlines than you might have in the past.

• You might consider sets of smaller assignments where you drop the lowest score. This allows students to shrug off temporary setbacks, or even strategically skip an assignment. Describe those possibilities explicitly, and encourage students to use good judgement with such opportunities.

• If a student asks for a deadline extension, state that explicitly via email, so they have a clear record of your expectations.

Go Paperless

If you are accustomed to collecting printed work from students, the switch to online can be a challenge. But even with classroom meetings, digital, rather than paper transmission of student work is in several respects preferable. However slight, paper can be a transmission vector for COVID-19. So, too, can printers, both because students must touch them to get their printouts, and because they can be places where students congregate while waiting for printouts.

• Both D2L and Turnitin (available within D2L Dropboxes) allow professors to comment directly on student work.

• D2L's quizzes tool can be used for short, low-stakes open-book quizzes to encourage student reading.

• If you have created a lot on the web to teach a course, why not have students create on the web as assignments? Students can create websites, videos, or other web-based work, in projects that still require them to research, write, describe, analyze, or evaluate.

An Online Gradebook

An online gradebook is essential for a multi-modal or remote/online course. You need to record and track grades somewhere, and if you do it in D2L

• it can be as simple or complex as you want. Some faculty have only grade items that add up to a total score. Others use assigned weights, categories that find and drop the lowest score for each student, and other complex features. You choose the features you want.

• students get a personalized grade report. This may simply report scores or percentages only, or have text or links to feedback, and an overall running or average score. These are choices you make.

• d2L will handle calculations for you, based on either adding points up throughout the semester, or by averaging based on varous weights you assign to assignments or categories of assignments.

• you can copy your gradebook, along with other course content, between semesters. So you build it once, and then only make modifications as you wish, semester-after-semester.

In student feedback on course design, they often report appreciating online grade reports supplied through the D2L gradebook tool. Trying to notify students about their grade via email will not scale well for large classes.

You can see the basics for online gradebooks in this guide. For a complete set of gradebook tutorials, see the D2L Self-Paced Training Guide.

Online Quizzes and Exams