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Summer Online Course Checklist

Summer Online Course Checklist

Apr 25, 2020

Overview

Purpose: After working through this checklist, instructors will have a reasonably designed summer course.

Ask: five years from now, what do I want my students to remember and use that they learned in my course? This is your overall goal.

Objectives

Establish objectives for your course.
Try to group your objectives to narrow them down to 3-5 objectives.
Be sure the objectives are worded from the student’s perspective and contain measurable verbs.

Examples

Starter objective: By the end of this course, students will understand the importance of primary research in written work.
Polished objective: By the end of this course, students will be able to conduct primary research and use it appropriately in their written work.

Assessments

Using your objectives as a checklist, match each objective with an assessment to be sure that your course includes at least one assessment for each objective.

As you are matching your objectives to assessments, write that information down for your students. This practice lets students know how they will progress through the course and shows them why your assessments—and their academic integrity—matter.

Identify criteria with assignment Rubrics/Metrics that show success and areas for improvement.
Clearly identify the criteria for success on each assessment.

Assignments

      For each assignment, ask yourself the following questions:

Do I want to review all of these assignments?
Are these assignments items that I look forward to receiving from my students? If not, what product could I ask for that would be interesting or exciting for my students to use to practice as they progress toward objectives? Assign that product instead.
Can my students submit these assignments online?
Is this essential to student progress in the course?
Toward which objective does this assignment move my students? (Be sure to tell students which objective the assignment will help them to meet.)
Can I provide opportunities for students to check their own work against a standard?
Will I allow multiple attempts on the assignment? How many?
Do my students have to achieve a certain mark on the assignment before they can progress to the next section of the module? If so, have I set the next section up with adaptive release?

Review

At this point, the course objectives, assessments, and assignments should align through rubrics, much like peas align in a pod.

Class Sessions/Modules/Weeks

     As you design each course session/module/week, focus on four activities for each session/module/week.

Something to read. Make these short if possible. Ensure that they are accessible. Use Open Educational Resources or materials that students can retrieve virtually from the SU Libraries. If you need support, contact your library liaison.
Something to view/hear. Make these short if possible also. Online attention span is about 10-15 minutes.  Again, ensure that these materials are accessible.
Something to discuss. When students use new information or skills, they are more likely to encode that new information in their minds and to remember it. Discussion can help them to do exactly that. As you set up discussions, keep in mind the following best practices:

Something to do. Help students know how to use the information that you’re giving them along the way. Consider some of these ideas as a way to see how students are processing the information:

Suggestions and directions can be found here and here.