Course Design Tools    

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Designing Your Course Structure: Consider carefully how your course will be organized the attached document will provide you with some tips! Course Structure (word)

The Path to Effective Course Design:
  1. Create an outline of the topics you plan to cover in your course.  This may not look like your traditional "course outline" in that you may have your own order in which you teach the topics.
  2. Collect the topics into units that make sense to you.  
  3. Create a brief description or overview of each unit. Create what you want the students to learn for each unit (objectives) 
  4. Create outcomes for each objective.
  5. Develop activities for each outcome.
  6. Determine how each activity will be evaluated.

Resources:


Welcoming Your Students:
At the very start of your class post a welcome letter. You may choose to do this in an announcement or in an item or separate page. Whatever your vehicle for the letter, it should be the first thing the student runs across when opening the course for the first time. Items that should be in the letter are outlined below:

Your completed letter should:
1. welcome your student to the class in an encouraging tone in a short message identifying yourself.
2. explain the "Course Basics" including:
  • the name of your course and
  • the date it begins
  • the duration of the course
  • the first steps in beginning the course
3. prepare your students for a successful start by including the following items: 
  • the estimated number of hours each student should expect to commit to this course
  • clarify if this is a fully online class or if there are campus visits required (if so, specify what these visits are for and, if possible at this point, how many there will be and provide the dates of the visits)
  • where students should go or who they should contact (a url is fine) if they have trouble logging into the your course or don't understand how to log in
  • the url for the your campus' disabled students services center or representative who supports accommodations for disabled student
  • at least one resource for new online students (details about a new online student orientation provided through your institution or a link to an external "Are You Ready for an Online Class" quiz or presentation)
  • your preferred method of contact
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