The purpose of this book is to provide guidance and advice for instructors who would like to develop an online course. The overall goal is to provide some clarity about many of the steps required to propose and design a course, to describe the resources needed, and to explain the roles of the stakeholders. Online…

Modern online courses are an extension of older forms of distance learning, going back to mail and correspondence courses of the 1700s (Harting  & Erthal, 2005). These courses were followed in the 1900s by radio, telephone, and television-based educational efforts (Harting & Erthal, 2005). Computers were used to deliver educational programs as early as the…

Instructor-Centered Versus Student-Centered Most (but not all) courses tend to be either focused on the instructor as dispenser of knowledge, or the learner as self-guided constructor of knowledge. Many courses are a mixture of both, but gravitate towards one side or the other regardless. Courses of any size can be either student-centered or instructor-centered, so…

While online courses could potentially cover any topic, your institution or company may have a specific niche within the online learning world that they focus on. Or you may have the freedom to cover any topic you like. Either way, there are several areas related to online course design that you should be familiar with…

Once you are familiar with online learning in general and the tools you will need, you will need to decide if a MOOC or a regular online course is the right choice for you. Once you have decided which the best choice is, the next step is to begin the official proposal process. Proposals for…

What We Know Works In general, there are many different ways to design online courses that work in different contexts, and many ways to design online courses that do not work in various other contexts. We are avoiding the term “best practices” here because online teaching and learning can vary in different contexts, making “best”…

In order to cross over from passive content consumption into active learning, you will need to make real-life activities the focus of your course content (Hayes, 2015). Activities can be discussions, interactive assignments, blogging, and social media participation – or could even involve learners themselves creating content and activities. Platform-Specific Activities Most course platforms have…

In addition to activities, online courses also usually contain content. Content can be videos, text, webpages, and textbooks. While MOOCs are typically lighter in these areas than a typical online course, traditional online courses can also be light on content, while MOOCs can be heavy on content. This content can be external to the LMS…

The section on openness in the previous chapter touched on the concept of “open” as being more complex than just “free.” In a more formal sense, educational resources that are released openly are often called “open educational resources” (OER). But there is often more to OER being considered “open” than just price. The OER Commons…

Grading in Online Courses Grading and assessment in learning is a complex subject that can (and often does) fill an entire book alone. It is also an area that all instructors with any experience in teaching know well. Grading can run the gamut from informal off the cuff questions thrown out spontaneously in class to…

Video production is a time-intensive process that requires extensive planning and preparation. Please review the following sections to ensure that you have allotted enough time and resources to create the desired amount of video you would like for your course. Timed Transcripts In order to meet most online accessibility guidelines, you will need to have…

You may have noticed that many online courses utilize social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter. While there really is no one right way to utilize social media in a course, there are concepts and designs that work better than others. This section will cover some ideas and suggestions for social media usage in…

Online courses have given learners across the globe a unique opportunity to learn outside of formal educational settings and in less supervised environments. The independent nature of this form of learning heightens the need for learners to have the tools to both initiate and manage their own learning. Moreover, as individuals engage with content, instructors,…

Much of what this manual covers so far would still fall under the category of traditional or standard online learning. Of course, don’t let terms like “traditional” or “standard” fool you – online learning is still relatively new in the larger picture of learning, and there is a lot we don’t know about it. While…

Now that you have successfully planned your course it is time to tell the world about it and get those enrollment numbers moving. For those in more traditional institutions and companies, this may just mean getting your course listed in the course catalog or company newsletter. However, for other courses (especially MOOCs), you might need…

There are still many other issues that have not yet been covered. You might have noticed that this manual does not go much into overall processes to follow to create courses. While there are many out there (Dick, Carey, & Carey, 2001; Smith & Ragan, 2004), most of them that are some variation of the…

Anderson, T., & Garrison, D. R. (1998). Learning in a networked world: New roles and responsibilities. In C. Gibson (Ed.), Distance learners in higher education (pp. 97-112). Madison, WI.: Atwood Publishing. Arbaugh, J. B., Bangert, A., & Cleveland-Innes, M. (2010). Subject matter effects and the community of inquiry (CoI) framework: An exploratory study. The Internet…

Front Matter Mavs Open Press (https://library.uta.edu/scholcomm/mavs-open-press) Creative Commons Licenses (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/) UTA Libraries’ OER (https://library.uta.edu/scholcomm/open-education/oer) Pressbooks Accessibility Policy (https://pressbooks.org/blog/2018/05/01/our-accessibility-policy-and-forthcoming-accessibility-improvements) Open Education at UTA (http://libguides.uta.edu/utacares) OER Adoption Form (https://uta.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8HTkgCym5Q6Mk7j) BCcampus Open Education Resources (https://open.bccampus.ca/) LINK Research Lab (http://linkresearchlab.org/) Chapter 2 Bringing out the Human in Synchronous and Asynchronous Media for Learning (https://humanmooc.pressbooks.com/chapter/bringing-out-the-human-in-synchronous-and-asynchronous-media-for-learning/) From Instructivism to Connectivism: Theoretical Underpinnings of MOOCs” by…