Linda Unger, Senior Instructional Designer

Preparing your online course for winter term? Worried about how to maintain the academic rigor without overwhelming yourself and your students?

Here are some strategies for shortened terms that might help.

Course Design Tips:

• Organize your content into topical modules, rather than “weeks.” For example, in the fall semester each week might consist of 1 topic, but you can easily double or triple up on topics to teach in winter or summer. 
• For modules with more than one topic, you can provide students with a choice in topics and have them present to the whole group so students are learning from each other and covering more than one facet of the course.
• If you use Blackboard’s Date Restrictions to reveal new content in stages, consider overlapping dates so students can work slightly ahead. For example, if module 2 normally ends on Sunday night, you can open module 3 on Saturday instead of Monday.

Assessment/Feedback: 

• Consider using frequent quizzes, short one-paragraph “checks for understanding,” or discussion boards  to help students gauge their own progress.
• Grade assignments quickly so that students have the benefit of your feedback before it’s too late  to improve their performance.

Workload: 

• Use an online workload calculator to get a handle on how realistic your expectations are, especially for a winter or summer term. Then think about whether you can trim anything while keeping the essentials of the course. 
• The New York Department of Education has some guidelines for determining time on task.

Does everything in a regular 14-week term need to be identical in a 6- week or 3-week? Might it be counterproductive in an accelerated term? Can anything be omitted? Try this filtering process for examining the course content*:

One to two weeks before the course starts:

• Prepare and send out your syllabus as a Word/PDF attachment. This gives students a chance to buy books and get a jump start on the readings. It also sets the tone for an accelerated term.
• Send out a link to a welcome video where you briefly introduce yourself and your course. Here’s an example. 
• Allow students to post an introduction in the discussion board or VoiceThread so they can get to know their classmates.
• Open the Blackboard site early** so students can access your lectures and other materials. Make the assignment dues dates explicit. You’d be surprised to know that experienced online students will take advantage of this.
• Cheerlead! Use the Announcements tool in Blackboard to encourage your students to log in early and often. Post an announcement and send it to students’ email addresses. Tell them how much you want them to succeed in the course.

*Description of Filtering Content image

**Note: Blackboard will be down for critical system maintenance from December 27, 2020 – January 4, 2021. Consider emailing some readings, etc. to the students with your syllabus so they can get started prior to Blackboard’s availability. While Blackboard is unavailable, you can download a list of your student’s emails from SOLAR.