I think most folks have heard by now that the California State University system (in which I work) has announced the intention to prepare for fall classes to be primarily online. I have to say, I am sort of confused why everyone is making such a big deal about this - no matter what your own institution is saying, no instructor who cares about their own mental health (let alone their students) should be thinking we are going back to 'business as usual' in the fall. In my mind, the only sane thing to do is at least prepare for the possibility of still teaching remotely.
Fortunately, unlike this spring, we now have a lot more time for that preparation. Faculty developers across the country have been working overtime since March, and they aren't slowing down now; we are all trying to make sure we can offer our faculty the training and resources they will need to redesign fall courses for online or hybrid modalities. But one big difference between the training faculty needed this spring, and what they need to prepare for the fall, really comes down to intentional course design. Since this is one of those topics that most faculty have never thought about (because many faculty never get formal training in pedagogy and how to teach), I wanted to use this post to explain how I think about designing effective courses (and while this all applies to effective courses in any modality, it is particularly relevant for online courses).
The main point here is that designing effective courses requires thinking about both foundations of course DESIGN and options for course DELIVERY. I think of the foundations of course DESIGN as being largely about the three main "WHAT" questions of a course:
Note that nothing in that last paragraph has anything to do with whether the course is face-to-face, fully online or some hybrid of the two, and says nothing about what I, the instructor, am going to do to help them with any of it. That leads me to course DELIVERY, which I think of as being largely about HOW students will do these things and HOW the instructor will support students as they do them.
Continuing my same example, the outcome (1) doesn't change, but how students will learn and how they will produce their evidence of learning could look very different from instructor to instructor and for different modalities. For students to show they can "accurately analyze the impact of government policies on different markets" (2), they might answer questions on an exam, fill out a worksheet, write a paper, give a presentation, etc. Which option an instructor chooses could depend on their own background and experience, the size of the class, and/or the students they serve. And each of those options will be deployed in physically different ways in a face-to-face class versus online, and require different skills on the part of the instructor to implement.
Similarly, to "understand concepts like elasticity, etc." (3), students might read a textbook or listen to me lecture, perhaps discuss with their classmates or answer some questions. Again, which option I choose will likely depend on my own style, the class, the students, and each option would be implemented differently in different modalities. In addition, all the other aspects of how we ensure students can learn - the support and feedback we provide, how we build relationships, the ways we motivate and incentivize students to do the work, the policies we adopt to guide behavior - these also can be implemented in different ways depending on who we are, who our students are and what modality we are teaching in.
Of course, when planning a course, few instructors actually parse out course design foundations from course delivery - we tend to think about what we want students to do based on how we expect them to do it (which is often based on our experience with how things have been done in the past). And honestly, many instructors do not actually think intentionally about the what at all; they only focus on the how. And even for those faculty who are intentional about the what, the how is integrally connected, influencing what we think is even possible and reflecting what kind of course we aim to create.
So now we can think about why this spring's transition to remote instruction was so difficult: regardless of how carefully you might have originally planned your course, the how was completely disrupted. Faculty had to figure out an entirely new how in just days, which would be challenging by itself, but was made even more so when simultaneously dealing with homeschooling, sharing home offices with others, spotty wifi and learning new tools like Zoom. Even if you were clear about your what (and again, most faculty aren't actually that intentional about their design in the first place), being forced to switch up your how in such a short time means most faculty just focused on finding the tools that would allow them to replicate their previous how with as little disruption as possible.
And this reaction is also why every faculty developer and instructional designer has been adamant that what everyone has been doing this spring is not "online learning". We all might have been using online tools but actually designing an effective online course requires thinking carefully about the distinction and integration between the what and the how, between foundations of course design and course delivery. Yes, you need to know how to use the tools but there is a reason why, when faculty ask about tools, any faculty developer or instructional designer worth their salt will respond with, "Before we get to that, why don't you tell me what your learning goals are? What are you trying to accomplish, or have students accomplish?" Faculty need time to consider those foundational design questions and then to consider what it means to implement their answers in an online environment. They also need time to think about, and learn best practices for, how to recreate all the other aspects of how we ensure students can learn - providing support and feedback, building relationships, setting appropriate policies.
Hopefully, whatever training your own institution provides will encourage faculty to consider the what before, or at least alongside, the how. I urge you to take that work seriously, to recognize that thinking through your goals and what you want students to do is ultimately about making it easier to choose tools and craft assignments that will help students achieve those goals. Being intentional in that work should also make it a LOT easier to pivot to a different how mid-semester if need be (and that is true whether you start online and can return to face-to-face or vice versa).
On the off chance your institution is not offering any training that addresses the foundations of course design, feel free to use this course design toolkit (or this self-paced course) to work through those what questions on your own...
Fortunately, unlike this spring, we now have a lot more time for that preparation. Faculty developers across the country have been working overtime since March, and they aren't slowing down now; we are all trying to make sure we can offer our faculty the training and resources they will need to redesign fall courses for online or hybrid modalities. But one big difference between the training faculty needed this spring, and what they need to prepare for the fall, really comes down to intentional course design. Since this is one of those topics that most faculty have never thought about (because many faculty never get formal training in pedagogy and how to teach), I wanted to use this post to explain how I think about designing effective courses (and while this all applies to effective courses in any modality, it is particularly relevant for online courses).
The main point here is that designing effective courses requires thinking about both foundations of course DESIGN and options for course DELIVERY. I think of the foundations of course DESIGN as being largely about the three main "WHAT" questions of a course:
- What knowledge, skills and attitudes will students learn? (goals and outcomes)
- What evidence will students produce to show they have learned? (assessments)
- What will students do in order to acquire the requisite knowledge, skills and attitudes, i.e., what will they do to actually learn? (activities)
Note that nothing in that last paragraph has anything to do with whether the course is face-to-face, fully online or some hybrid of the two, and says nothing about what I, the instructor, am going to do to help them with any of it. That leads me to course DELIVERY, which I think of as being largely about HOW students will do these things and HOW the instructor will support students as they do them.
Continuing my same example, the outcome (1) doesn't change, but how students will learn and how they will produce their evidence of learning could look very different from instructor to instructor and for different modalities. For students to show they can "accurately analyze the impact of government policies on different markets" (2), they might answer questions on an exam, fill out a worksheet, write a paper, give a presentation, etc. Which option an instructor chooses could depend on their own background and experience, the size of the class, and/or the students they serve. And each of those options will be deployed in physically different ways in a face-to-face class versus online, and require different skills on the part of the instructor to implement.
Similarly, to "understand concepts like elasticity, etc." (3), students might read a textbook or listen to me lecture, perhaps discuss with their classmates or answer some questions. Again, which option I choose will likely depend on my own style, the class, the students, and each option would be implemented differently in different modalities. In addition, all the other aspects of how we ensure students can learn - the support and feedback we provide, how we build relationships, the ways we motivate and incentivize students to do the work, the policies we adopt to guide behavior - these also can be implemented in different ways depending on who we are, who our students are and what modality we are teaching in.
Of course, when planning a course, few instructors actually parse out course design foundations from course delivery - we tend to think about what we want students to do based on how we expect them to do it (which is often based on our experience with how things have been done in the past). And honestly, many instructors do not actually think intentionally about the what at all; they only focus on the how. And even for those faculty who are intentional about the what, the how is integrally connected, influencing what we think is even possible and reflecting what kind of course we aim to create.
So now we can think about why this spring's transition to remote instruction was so difficult: regardless of how carefully you might have originally planned your course, the how was completely disrupted. Faculty had to figure out an entirely new how in just days, which would be challenging by itself, but was made even more so when simultaneously dealing with homeschooling, sharing home offices with others, spotty wifi and learning new tools like Zoom. Even if you were clear about your what (and again, most faculty aren't actually that intentional about their design in the first place), being forced to switch up your how in such a short time means most faculty just focused on finding the tools that would allow them to replicate their previous how with as little disruption as possible.
And this reaction is also why every faculty developer and instructional designer has been adamant that what everyone has been doing this spring is not "online learning". We all might have been using online tools but actually designing an effective online course requires thinking carefully about the distinction and integration between the what and the how, between foundations of course design and course delivery. Yes, you need to know how to use the tools but there is a reason why, when faculty ask about tools, any faculty developer or instructional designer worth their salt will respond with, "Before we get to that, why don't you tell me what your learning goals are? What are you trying to accomplish, or have students accomplish?" Faculty need time to consider those foundational design questions and then to consider what it means to implement their answers in an online environment. They also need time to think about, and learn best practices for, how to recreate all the other aspects of how we ensure students can learn - providing support and feedback, building relationships, setting appropriate policies.
Hopefully, whatever training your own institution provides will encourage faculty to consider the what before, or at least alongside, the how. I urge you to take that work seriously, to recognize that thinking through your goals and what you want students to do is ultimately about making it easier to choose tools and craft assignments that will help students achieve those goals. Being intentional in that work should also make it a LOT easier to pivot to a different how mid-semester if need be (and that is true whether you start online and can return to face-to-face or vice versa).
On the off chance your institution is not offering any training that addresses the foundations of course design, feel free to use this course design toolkit (or this self-paced course) to work through those what questions on your own...
Comments
Post a Comment
Comments that contribute to the discussion are always welcome! Please note that spammy comments whose only purpose seems to be to direct traffic to a commercial site will be deleted.