This fully-online course is designed to introduce participants to teaching online – the concepts, competencies, pedagogies, and practices that are required to plan, develop, and teach an online course. Along with introducing individuals to these key topics, this course showcases the perspectives of students, faculty, and instructional designers who have a wide range of experience teaching and learning online. Created by OpenSUNY, the course is completely self-paced and can be completed in either a structured or casual way.
Type of Material:
Online Course
Recommended Uses:
This course is great for educators (faculty, graduate assistants, teaching assistants, prospective faculty) to gain a baseline understanding of what it means to effectively teach in the online learning environment. It can serve as a supplement to larger instruction, or as a standalone resource.
Technical Requirements:
An internet connection
Identify Major Learning Goals:
The site identifies its main learning goal as helping participants to gauge their readiness for teaching online and fill any requisite competencies that are identified. They specify the intended learning outcomes as being able to:
Determine if you have the prerequisite skills, knowledge, attitudes, and support to be successful teaching online.
Define common terms related to online teaching and learning.
Identify core competencies needed to teach online.
Explain the value of applied effective online teaching practices.
Evaluate the benefits and affordances of teaching online.
Determine if online teaching is right for you.
Locate and participate in the Open SUNY Community of Practice.
Target Student Population:
College Upper Division, Graduate School, Professional
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:
None, though individuals interested or scheduled to teach online would benefit most greatly.
Content Quality
Rating:
Strengths:
This online course is both rich in the coverage of the salient points within the topic and in the diverse representation of viewpoints and methods shares. The content was created both in house and curated from the web, representing the most critical items needed to be covered before launching into teaching an online course. From a series of reflective checklists, video and written didactic, and a combination of outside resources, educators will get a robust picture of what it means to teach online, regardless of their prior experience with the topic. It provides models of design approaches and technology uses. It includes perspectives from learners and instructors.
Concerns:
None.
Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool
Rating:
Strengths:
The learning objectives, topics covered, and assignments at a glance are clearly articulated at the course and module levels. The site does a phenomenal job of recognizing differentiated learner skills and preferences alike - users of all sorts of prior experience can come in and specifically choose how they want to navigate through the material. Called the "mapped out journey" and the "meandering journey," users can pop in and out of lessons in a way that works best for them. And at the completion of the course, learners can submit evidence of successful completion of the material for a digital badge. The material itself includes the voices of educators in various roles and responsibilities, giving a diverse set of perspectives on online education. As such, the material is malleable and ready to use in a wide variety of contexts and settings. There are tasks that can be completed for digital badges.
Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty
Rating:
Strengths:
The site is well-designed and engaging, giving learners a broad picture of what the site contains and where to go to find the content. The materials are voiced from a wide variety of perspectives, but are voiced by a cohesive guide to help learners feel supported. The site also includes a tour video to kick things off strongly. The material is flexible in use and the layout is fairly intuitive.
Concerns:
Though the site is excellent, some slight tweaks might help to strengthen the usability of the site even further:
Since there is a multitude of content curated on the site that has been pulled in from other locations, it would be fantastic to let users know when they are leaving the site with a small icon next to external links
For those planning out their time, it would be wonderful to include a time estimate for both activities and modules
There are places where the main navigation moves on the site, which may be confusing to some users. If there was a way to fix the navigation in one location for all pages, that would help to mitigate any confusion.
Creative Commons:
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