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Online Learning Management
Your 5 Best Tips for No-Fail Production
5/1/2008
TWO: Embrace 'Chunking.'
In the creation of your own online courses, or even after the purchase of existing online content, think in terms of "chunks" of information, and be willing to move preordered sections of information around. Paying attention to the "chunks" is a good way to keep everyone-especially students-involved.
TIP 2: Embrace ‘Chunking'
Sometimes the easiest way to take advantage of the online course interface and help students understand complicated concepts, is to break the information up into digestible bits. This approach, colloquially referred to in pedagogical circles as "chunking," is particularly popular and efficient in online learning, where the lack of faceto- face interaction amplifies the need for simplicity.
Such was the case at Chattanooga State Technical Community College (TN), where professors rely on instructional content they obtain from the National Repository of Online Courses. In organizing her 2008 syllabi, Kathy Long, associate professor of history and geography at the college, purchased an online history course from the repository, created by educators in California. But she reorganized certain sections, or chunks, to fit her needs. As part of her modification, Long pulled out the course's original chunk about the Antebellum South and attached it to the section about the Compromise of 1850. Later in the syllabus, Long also switched around chunks about the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement.
"If one history professor prefers to teach the subject in chronological order, but another prefers to teach it on a thematic basis, they both can win with this [customized chunking] strategy," she explains. "One might look at online courses and say, ‘Why move chunks around?' but the fact remains that the educators who create courses aren't always the same people who teach them, and [embracing chunking] is a good way to keep everyone-including students-involved."
Long isn't the only higher education professional to advocate chunking. This past December, during the Campus Technology webinar, "Building Better Moodlerooms: Online Strategies and Best Practices" (see "Making Better Moodlerooms"), Moodle spokesperson Bob McDonald hailed the strategy, as well. Chunking, he pointed out, "allows students to quickly ascertain what's going on, and then move on to the next topic at hand." According to McDonald, providing students with segmented page-bypage views of large concepts actually helps them learn. "Chunking gives students very concise, defined pieces of data in which to experience a subject," he maintained.
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