Principles
Principles for Effective Online Instruction
Here are six principles that can lead to effective student engagement and learning in online instruction.
For an overview, watch the video titled "Principles of Online Instruction".
Principle #1 - Curate before you Create
Content creation is time-consuming and effort intensive. There is a lot of good content already available. Don’t re-invent, instead re-purpose.
How:
Use your own previous recordings (if any).
Use a colleague’s, in your department or in another institute.
Find other OER (Open Educational Resources) repositories.
Create activities for students to assimilate and apply the content.
Curation is not just pointing students to content from other sources. Curation requires the instructor to state how the curated content fits into one's course plan, and create activities for students to assimilate the content.
Different institutes have different policies regarding curation. Check your institute policy on percentage of a course that can be covered using curated materials before going ahead.
Principle #2 - Keep videos short and insert reflection spots
Long lecture videos have been shown to be ineffective for student engagement and learning. Even short videos are not watched fully. Hence, include activities to simulate interaction.
How:
Split your face-to-face lecture into a few chunks (sections within the lecture).
Insert a Reflection Spot into each chunk.
Create you LeD (Learning Dialog) video; use this constructor.
Principle #3 - Give practice, immediately and frequently, with feedback
Giving practice problems and exercises all together at the end of a module has been shown to be ineffective. Incorporate frequent practice, and give appropriate feedback on students' responses.
How:
Split your homework or assignments into a few chunks, corresponding to your LeDs.
Plan feedback to be given for the questions.
Create you LbD (Learning by Doing) activity; use this constructor.
Principle #4: Provide diverse resources and incentivize their access
It is important to address prerequisites, language issues and other needs. Simply giving a list of resources for further reading is ineffective. Make resources available at appropriate points, and incentivize students to access them.
How:
Find OER resources of diverse types.
Give a recall-level Quiz to ensure that students access the resources.
Create you LxT (Learning eXtension Trajectory); use this constructor.
Principle #5: Leverage peer-learning
Peer discussions are important to bring in diverse perspectives, discover additional resources, and avoid isolation issues. Simply providing a discussion forum has been shown to be ineffective for fostering meaningful discussions and peer-learning. Make focus questions for steering a discussion, and incentivize students to participate.
How:
Write a focus question that each student should respond to.
Ask students to post their response and read/react to a few others.
Give a simple Quiz based on the discussion to ensure that students participate.
Create you LxI (Learner eXperience Interaction); use this constructor.
Principle #6: Respond to student actions, in a timely and appropriate manner
It is important to maintain connect with the students. See how they are doing in the course, what they are saying in the forums. Then adapt instruction accordingly.
How:
Respond to discussion forum posts. Recognize and reward participation.
Do live interactions once in a while.
Communicate frequently using multiple modes.
Use analytics provided by the platform. Adapt instruction based on student performance.
Applying the principles
The LCM Model is one way of operationalizing these principles. The subsequent modules in this course provide details of applying these principles while creating and conducting an online course.
Quick Reference