Teaching Online: Creating Online Content
Translating Classroom Content
Online Course Sites: From Document Repositories to Learning EnvironmentsAs you enter a virtual learning space, such as a Blackboard course site, what you see is not an instructor and students (although they are virtually present intermittently). What you see are instructional mediums, that is, content (items to be engaged with in some way-read, viewed, discussed, completed), and areas for personal interaction (such as the large and small discussion boards, virtual classroom, and email function). Thus the content (and its presentation) is more visible and assumes a greater teaching burden than it often does in the classroom.
The teaching responsibility of online content is why documents and other instructional aids used in the classroom, such as handouts and PowerPoints often need "beefing up" online: because they are less an instructional support or adjunct in a virtual learning environment than they are a major learning facilitator. And, with instructional coding, such as introductions, transitions, directions, explanations, annotations, and reminders, they could even be seen as one representation of the instructor's presence. The coding serves another end that could be considered both an instructional and design purpose: it ensures that the discrete content items and assignments that you have posted cohere as instructional modules. Coherence and clear organization of instructional materials helps ensure that distance students can interact with a course site, and make their way through a course, successfully.
The additional attention to enriching documents or content doesn't minimize the importance of discussion, activities, and student interactions; it simply acknowledges that in an online environment, content is one of the primary vehicles of teaching and learning. Distance students engage with content as much or more, depending upon the course, than they interact with each other and the instructor.
In the second of the two worksheets you completed in the last section, you listed components for two instructional modules based upon the topic to be covered and the teaching and learning methods to be used. If you'd like to review the relevant discussion click here and practice worksheet click here.
As a reminder, here are some common classroom-based teaching materials and methods mentioned in the last section.
| Common Classroom-Based Materials |
Common Classroom-Based Methods |
| Textbooks | Reading |
| Reading packets | Lecture |
| PowerPoints | Discussion |
| Worksheets | Study questions |
| Guidelines | Problem sets |
| Visual aids | Activities |
| Software | Case studies |
| Peer interaction | |
| Fieldwork | |
| Games | |
| Simulations | |
| Model building |
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Basic Elements |
Methods: Readings |
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