ID'ing the right courses to start an on line offering
I have never developed any on-line courses but I am very anxious to start being able to deliver my classes on-line. I teach business class and as an example Accounting is taught in three seperate classes is there a prper sequencing that I should use for making classes available on line or should I wait till they are all complete and make them available all at once.
Thanks,
Bernie Sarra
Bernie,
I personally like the idea of releasing them one at a time (especially if you are new to this) - then you can tweak each class based on the feedback from the one that preceded it.
Thanks,
Jon
Jon,
Thanks, That is what I will try. I'll start with my lower classes (Acct. 1) and go from there.
Bernie
Bernie,
The most daunting factor when creating a brand new online course is the time commitment, which in my experience tends to be about 5:1 or 10:1, meaning it took me a lot more time than I imagined to setup my online class.
I agree with Jon's suggestion of working thru part one of your Accounting course initially for a few reasons. First, you are going to make mistakes – it goes with the territory – but don't let that intimidate you. The first "big lesson" I learned was if a link wasn't working or the student couldn't view the online media they stopped right there, didn't pass go, didn't collect $200. That is still a source of frustration for me, which gets into social and cultural differences between students today vs. 20 years ago [and I have an 18 year old son, so this isn't theoretical knowledge].
The second reason I would only develop the first part of your Accounting class is to allow yourself the time to experiment a bit. I always tell my students, "I'm trying out a new technique here and would like your feedback." They seem to love that they are involved in "course creation" and I was surprised at the amount of feedback I received when I started doing this.
The last reason would be once you have a "template" for how to setup and run a successful part one of your Accounting sequence it will make setting up parts two and three much easier.
Ron,
Thanks for your contribution!
Jon
Bernie,
I would agree with Jon. There will be a learning curve. If possible, try to pilot the newly online course with fewer students. Also, reach out to support you may have on campus for course development. An instructional designer can help save you time!
