Lesson 1: Online Content Basics

Overview

In the previous unit, you looked at your teaching style - your personality, your content, and your instruction - in general terms and began discussing how you adapt your style to the online environment. In this unit, you will be discussing one specific aspect of style - content (curriculum materials and resources) selection and use.

Often, many teachers use text books and handouts as their primary content resource; however, in an online environment, there are many opportunities to include engaging, rigorous content that includes text, images, animations, video, etc. In this lesson, you'll take a look at what some teachers have included as content in their online courses so that you can get ideas about what you'd like to include in your own online courses.

 

Standards, Benchmarks, and Learning Objectives

In this Unit, we're indirectly addressing almost all of the SREB Standards for Quality Online Teaching and Quality Online Courses simultaneously simply by uncovering and discussing our assumptions about online teaching and online courses. Please review the SREB Standards for Quality Online Teaching and Quality Online Courses which are listed after lesson 2 in this course content module.

To help you meet those standards, we must define a set of specific learning objectives. So, for this lesson, you will:

• identify types of content that can be included in an online environment,
• analyze the content across categories indicated as important by the SREB, and
• evaluate various content types for their impact on the learning experience.

 

Assignments

1. Field Trip, pt. deux: Content Comparison. Approximately 1 hour.
   • Download the Content Comparison worksheet and fill it (typed answers) out as you revisit three of the three of the Course Examples from your content area.
   • Save your worksheet with your last name and "content compare". For example, my document would be named bovard_contentcompare.doc
   • In WebCT Discussions, Topic: Content Comparisons, post a summary of your thoughts about the courses you reviewed and compared and attach your completed worksheet as an attachment to that post.
   • How the assignment is graded - 10 points for discussion post plus 25 points for a completed content comparison worksheet
     • Your post should be a minimum of 100 words, should provide meaningful analysis of the course content you reviewed, and should be posted during the week assigned.
     • Your content comparison worksheet should, at a minimum, answer the questions posed in each category.
2. Discussion assignment 2: Reply to other learners Approximately 30 minutes.
   • In WebCT Discussions, Topic: Content Comparisons, review the answers of at least two others and reply to them.
     • Do their comments help you envision new ways to include content in your own online course? Do they mention things you hadn't thought of? Do they make statements you strongly agree or disagree with?
   • How assignment is graded - 10 points
     • Again, there are no wrong or right answers here.
     • Reply to at least two learners using above criteria to obtain full credit.
3. Reading assignment: Approximately 1 hour to complete.
   • REQUIRED: Read Chapter 9 from You Can Teach Online: Building a Creative Learning Environment by Moore, Winograd, and Lang.

 

Extensions (optional)

1. Visit Hippocampus to gather information and more ideas for content for your online course.
2. Revise a small section of content from one of the courses you reviewed so that it adheres more closely to SREB guidelines and your own sense of good content (ie: appeals to various learning styles, is rigorous, utilizes multimedia, etc.)
3. Visit Merlot, find some lessons in your curriculum field, and peer review them using the SREB standards for quality online courses.

 

Next step

Continue to Lesson 2

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