Online Course Self-Evaluation for New Teachers

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Integration High

Organize: It is even more important in teaching an online course to group your lessons into units/modules that ow into and from one another. Information presented in an illogical or unorganized fashion has the ability to confuse students. Welcome: Prior to the rst day of class, craft a welcome message to your students. You can do this text based, slide show, video or use Voicethread. Remember, that your students do not get to interact with you on a daily basis like site based classes do. This is a chance for your students to get to know a little bit about you and your personality. The more personal you can make this, the better. Expectations: Be sure to set clear expectations for the course including: a detailed syllabus with assignment due dates, grading system, time frame for students to expect feedback/grades on assignments, and how and when to collaborate with others in discussion boards. Be sure to include a rubric to cover clear expectations for graded discussion board posts. This should be in a highly visible location on the main page. A short multiple choice quiz could be a good way to ensure every student understands Announcements/Welcome Pages: Announcements should be updated regularly. If they are not, then students will tend to stop checking for them. Even if the announcement is to simply remind them of a due date or expectation for an assignment. Welcome pages should be created for each new unit. Use a variety of formats to present information. With the use of a royalty-free image site, there is a plethora of photos that can be added to help introduce the unit and keep students interested. Opening Activity: To help ensure that your students understand how to navigate your online course and become accustomed to interacting with others regularly through discussion boards, it would be useful to have them publish an introduction post. This will also allow you to interact with students as you respond to each post. It is important that you respond to each student personally and not just copy and past a response. Remember, this is to help rid the online classroom of the cold and unfeeling stigma. Content: How much text is on your page? It is okay to have some text, but if it is going to require a large amount of reading it should be in a .pdf so that students can download it to an e-reader or easily print it out. Be sure to use a combination of pictures, videos, graphs, tables, animations, etc... appropriate to the unit to hold student interest. Presentations: Whether you are using past presentations or creating new ones, it is important to add an audio narration to them. This allows students to follow along and provides another opportunity for them to get to know your personality. DO NOT READ THE SLIDES. Use the slides to add interest and to help you and those that hear the presentation remember the main points.

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Discussions: It is important for as the instructor to add your input into discussions. However, be cautious of doing so too early and with declarative statements. Rather, pose questions to get the discussion moving forward and to cause the students to reexamine their original post. Assessments and Activities: There should be a variety of assessments and activities for the students to demonstrate their knowledge of the course content. Assessments should include graded and ungraded forms as well as formative and summative. It will be benecial to students to have self-graded quizzes at least once per unit to help them gauge their current understanding and mastery of the content. Communication: Instructors should post information necessary for the end of the unit. (i.e. Future due dates, reminder of late assignment policy, upcoming events that could affect the class schedule, etc...) Instructors should also respond to student questions and concerns in a prompt manner. (24-48 hours is the norm.) Resources: Include ample online resources for your students to utilize during their coursework. These should be included in the proper units/modules along the way but can also be grouped under a Resources section separated by unite/module. Prior to classes starting, double check that your links work and go where they are suppose to. There is nothing more frustrating to a student than to access a link that is no longer active. Navigation: Is your course easy to navigate? Does it ow easily from one component to the next? Can students easily navigate to past units/modules to access previous resources? If the answer to any of these is no, you need to recongure the ow of the course. Difcult navigation will cause undue stress for a student attempting to complete the course and could potentially cause them to give up. End of Course: A couple of week prior to the end of the course you should let the students know when their nal exam/project will be graded, when your last day in the online class will be, and how to contact you after the class has ended. You should also reect on the course as to better prepare for the next one.

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