Two Final Thoughts
Online Faculty Development Course
Students as Insiders
It's worth returning to an idea discussed in Lesson 2: be transparent with your students, regarding why they do what they do in your class.
Instructors often find that assessment is more effective if students are made insiders to the process. Explain to students what each graded activity is designed to accomplish in the class. Yes, it's worth points, and that adds up to a course grade. But assessments should be opportunities for them to exercise skills, self-check the progress of their learning, receive feedback from the instructor, identify areas of concern and finally, to demonstrate for record what and how they've learned.
Indicate to students when and how you decided to alter or adapt the course in response to their work or interests. Explain to students how some assessments prepare them for other, bigger-stakes assessments, or at least somewhat simulate real-world activities. Invite them to come up with challenges for each other, such as in "student generated exam questions."
This can establish a sense of partnership in the class, where expectations for learner effort can be quite high: I am challenging you to learn, not just trying to throw obstacles in your path.
Student Experience
The last point in the OFDC, and perhaps that which ties it all together, is that however you plan and implement your course, always consider how students experience it.
This does not mean sacrificing academic rigor, or running yourself ragged in service of a consumerist model of education. But consider how students of diverse backgrounds might interpret what they are seeing on their computer screens when they work in your D2L course space. Can they find what they need? Do the things they must do seem to work together? Do they have a sense that there is a living professor within the course (even though that professor might not be in the course space at the same time)? Do they feel part of a community or cohort of learners who may draw from each other's insights or experiences with the course content and activities?
Do not hesitate to ask students about these things. We have course evaluations available at the end of every semester, but you can more-or-less formally survey students on the topic at any point during the course.
Dr. Dorita Anne Norton (1931-1972), Crystallographer and faculty at SUNY Buffalo, 1968. Smithsonian Institution