Module 1: Designing the Online Curriculum
In this module, you will learn efficient ways of organizing your course to ensure that the learning activities, assessments, and content all support the learning objectives. The learning objectives serve as the foundation of your course. While the course-level learning objectives are often determined by your institution, you can create module-level learning objectives that clarify and support these course-level learning objectives and ensure that these module-level objectives are specific, measurable (use action verbs), and written from the learner's perspective. Once you have a solid course foundation, you can map out the learning activities and assessments. Then, you can build the course content to ensure students' success in meeting the goals of the course.
Overview
Creating a course for the first time and figuring out where to start can be quite challenging. Instead of spending hours and hours organizing materials and course activities with the hope that the students will get the knowledge they need, it is helpful if course creators start with these questions:
How can the curriculum be planned so that students can understand what they've learned?
How can I arrange the course elements so that students acquire the desired results?
How can I make learning an engaging experience?
Online course creators are faced with even more questions:
If I have a face-to-face course, how can I adjust it so that it fits better with online learning?
In what way can learning activities be designed in the online learning environment to make use of available technologies and minimize barriers?
How can I complete the above tasks and make my course inclusive, even for those with limited access to technology?
There are more excellent questions to guide the building process, but these are sufficient for now.
Let's get started!