Online education continues to grow around the world. As technology continues to improve, so too does the level of interaction, complexity, and diversity of multimedia elements involved in online course design. It is now time for course developers to look towards methods of enhancing their instructional design in order to take into account these changes. Simple notes on paper no longer capture the needed elements of the online course development process.
It is vital to develop a plan of instruction when considering putting a course on-line. The activities below will help develop the design plan.
In a traditional face-to-face course, the instructor often has complete control over the organization of their own course. The online instructor is central too, but not alone in setting up the organization and management of the course. New administrative skills are necessary for the online instructor to coordinate institutional, pedagogical, and technological demands.
Anyone can publish on the Web. The author or source of information should show some evidence of being knowledgeable, reliable, and truthful. Some questions you should ask are:
The name of the author may be at the top or bottom of the Web page. Sometimes there will be a link to more information about the author, but keep in mind that none of it may be true!
When giving an exam online, how can you be sure a student is actually doing their own work? What is the most secure way to handle online examinations? While there are no magic answers to these questions, there are many strategies an instructor can use to accurately assess student performance online and minimize a student’s temptation to cheat. Consider these options:
by Dale Maeder, Professor of Educational Psychology, UCLA
My online students often wonder how their participation in class discussions is going to be evaluated. Although I know that your grade here is probably not your greatest concern, you may be interested in knowing how I will be determining the participation portion of your course grade.
Suffice it to say that there are two fundamental principles I consider when calculating this portion of your grade:
Once you’ve created your rubric, the next step is to use it. As stated before, during the creation process, you should have taken into account both who would be using the rubric and who would see the rubric. Here are some guidelines for putting the rubric to use. They may seem like a lot, but as you begin to use more rubrics, these guidelines will become second nature.
Before creating a rubric, one must first understand the purpose of the given assessment because the rubric must be designed to meet that purpose. The six most common purposes of rubrics are listed below. They need not be mutually exclusive in all cases.
While many educators have heard of rubrics, many people have never even heard the word. We all use some form of rubric in our daily lives, even if they are not written down on paper. We might use a rubric in our mind to decide which food we like best on our plate. Is it too salty, just right, or not enough salt? In this article, we will take a look at rubrics; exploring what they are, what they do, why we need them, how we make them, how we use them, etc.