After completing my second course of the Online/eLearning Certificate, I feel as if I've learned a lot that will affect the way I teach and design courses in the future. One realization that I've had is that even if I go back to teaching in completely face-to-face contexts, I will definitely apply many of the things I’ve learned in EDUC 4150 and 4151. I am not yet sure what kind of students and what kind of course I’ll be teaching, but below are a few of the ways my approach to planning a course will change. Probably my greatest general takeaway is that I need more formal planning in my courses.
Retaining the engagement, interaction and sense of community in an online course
When planning and teaching language classes, building community and keeping the learners engaged have always been top of mind for me because language development doesn’t happen without these elements (and this is also what attracts students to private language institutes 😊). Language teaching approaches already emphasize all four types of interaction along with community building, but what were already core considerations for me with face-to-face classes will need to be even more deliberately planned for with online courses. Planning will need to focus more on the long term rather than on a week-to-week or even lesson-to-lesson basis as well. I’m looking forward to sitting down before a course is ever launched to plan these into the course.
Thinking carefully about alignment and backward design
Another concept I feel inspired by is the idea of backward design. In the past, I’ve approached course design somewhat informally and I’ve honed my approach to a course as I’ve delivered the same course multiple times. When designing an online course—or even a face-to-face course—I’m going to plan it much more deliberately, identifying learning objectives and proceeding from there. I’ll be much more careful about making sure the assessment and learning activities align with these objectives.
Using a quality checklist
As part of my planning process, I will find, adapt, or develop a quality checklist to help me with the planning process. I think it will not only improve the quality of the course I plan but will also make the planning process more efficient.
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