Repurposing materials and learning activities for the online environment

When moving courses online, it’s tempting to just put the same old materials onto the online platform. Here are some guidelines I think will be useful to consider before repurposing materials and activities for the online environment.

  1. For both in-person and online courses, the top priority is to (re)consider whether the materials or activities will help to fulfill the learning objectives. 
  2. Do the materials exploit the advantages of the online learning environment? For example, it may be a waste to use simple worksheets in an online course—they could perhaps be transformed into something more interactive or could be replaced by other formats like video or online games.
  3. Materials may have been very engaging in the classroom setting—consider whether they’ll still be engaging in the online environment. If not, can they be modified to make them more engaging? 
  4. Think about the tech tools that you could use to deliver the materials or activities. Is there a tool that’s already available or could be easily acquired that could work for them? If students need to access a new tool, it should be free and easy-to-access. It should be easy for everyone to learn how to use and should be free of privacy and security concerns.
  5. Ensure that the materials or the activities fit into the plan for how much synchronous / asynchronous learning you want to take place.

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