Your 5 Best Tips for No-Fail Production
Technologies for improved eCourse production abound but will have little impact if you don't have these best practices under your belt.
These days, with learning management system (LMS) offerings just about everywhere, online courses are almost as prevalent as classes taught in traditional classrooms with professors and students present at lecterns and desks.
Many colleges and universities turn to vendors to help them create these courses, a service that software providers such as Blackboard, eCollege, and Angel Learning offer as a supplement to standard LMS service. Other schools-especially those utilizing open source LMS solutions such as Moodle and Sakai-grab courses from repositories like the National Repository of Online Courses, the brand-new HippoCampus (see "Hungry, Hungry HippoCampus"), or they attempt to create coursework on their own.
In whatever manner schools develop online courses, professionals who have grappled with the challenge say the process is closer to science than art. With that in mind, we've asked a number of online course experts what they consider the five most critical steps to building online courses that work. (Note: For the latest in online course assessment information, not included here, see CT's March feature,"Uncharted Territory").
ONE: Create a Plan.
Faculty often believe that they can take what they've been doing for years and move it to an online template, but online courses actually are an entirely different animal requiring planning against three specific types of interactions.
TIP 1: Create a Plan
Abraham Lincoln once said, "If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first four hours sharpening the ax." The same strategy holds true for building no-fail online courses: The best courses require painstaking preparation and planning. And if anybody understands the need for planning, it's Michael Anderson, assistant director for course development and technology at the University of Texas System TeleCampus, based in Austin.