Structure

Essential Question

Just like other many planning models, you should start planning with the end learning target in mind. Use your target standard, critical concept, or cognitive skill to create an essential question. Essential questions help create an inquiry based focus which works well in the eLearning setting.

• Open Ended: Make sure there isn't one right answer. Right answers will dead end student thinking.

• Relevant: What questions are professionals in the field of your content trying to answer?

Consider creating a fun theme around your essential question to engage learners with interesting and motivating elements.

• Catching a thief

• Journey around the world

• Stopping a global epidemic

• Treasure hunt

• Innovation challenge - space race, monument design, stopping environmental disaster

Assessment

Create assessments that have purpose and meaning for the students. Craft an assessment which has value beyond the test and makes it hard to cheat.

• • • Avoid questions where answers can be copied from anywhere

    • Make responses personal - create connections between content and student’s real life

    • Give the assessment more value by making it relevant by emphasizing skills used in the real world

    • Focus assessments to one or two bullet points from the rubric/scale

Use online quizzes/Forms for formative assessment, diagnostics, and pretests. It's difficult to keep test integrity with online quizzes and therefore the results may not have much value as a summative assessment. Create value by making these assessments useful for student progress and self awareness.

Activities

Each of your activities should have a direct connection to the final product. Utilize a variety of activities to keep things interesting and meet the needs of different learners.

Direct Instruction (Webinars)

It is tempting to lecture with a slide deck during live(synchronous) elements of the class. Instead use live time to build relationships, encourage relevant discussion, and answer questions that are helpful for the whole group.

• Be aware of teacher talk time vs. student talk time

• Use break out groups. Create small discussion groups and assign a time to come back together. Assign roles for small groups.

• Use a text chat feature or shared Google Doc for student questions or other relevant notes.

  • • Assign another person to monitor the chat for important questions.

    • This will keep order and avoid people talking over each other.

    • If you can't get to a question right away, come back to it with an email or conversation with the specific student.

    • Students can also use this page to share links to relevant resources.

• Find ways to get each person's voice during the discussion. Be a facilitator of the conversation.

• Send out materials like shared Docs or Slides beforehand.

• Consider creating a unique note catcher for your live discussion. Think about whether or not you want a shared note sheet for everyone to contribute to or an individual copy for each student.

• Think about using live time as a virtual show and tell for students to showcase their projects and learning.

Discussion Boards

Utilyze online discussion boards for lower level assessment and to build toward a higher level skills and content.

• • • Avoid discussion questions that don’t facilitate discussion.

    • Summarizing the chapter or answering questions from the back of the chapter are not good discussion topics.

    • Spark and inspire toward more learning

    • Encourage asking questions and expecting responses

    • Create clear norms and expectations for responding to other students.

    • Give time for discussions to develop.

Classwork

Think about classwork as steps or checkpoints towards completing the end product. Each assignment needs to have value beyond just completion and the score.

• What skill or essential content does the assignment help the student to learn?

• How will the student get feedback on the assignment? (See the page on Feedback)

• What will students do with the feedback they receive? What are their next steps to learn and grow?

Scheduling

Create a predictable rhythm.

Plan for giving and responding to feedback.

Have one goal, checkpoint, or product for each week.

Think about a sequence of activities like this:

• Introduce assignment, establish expectations, create relevance

• Students work on completing their first iteration of the product

• Students post/turn-in their product for feedback from peers or teacher

• Give and receive feedback

• Make changes based on feedback

• Submit product at the end of the week

For larger products or assignments with more initial activities, extend the process out over 2 weeks. Don't leave out the feedback stage just to save time.