Elements of Online Course Design

When developing your online course, it can help to think that you are converting your existing course into a new medium. The content, goals, and objectives of the course should be similar--you are just modifying your delivery! The biggest differences between online and traditional instruction are: HOW the content is delivered, and HOW interactions are managed. This article relates directly with the first aspect--content delivery!

One of the first things I tell faculty regarding course design is--plan...plan...plan!  Don't wait till the last minute to design your course.  With so many factors to consider, course design needs to be given adequate time in order to develop and implement.  Ideally, you want to start planning a semester ahead, in which time, you should sit down with a course designer in order to facilitate the process.  

The following elements are common to well-designed course sites. Although some are more important than others, they all serve as good techniques which can enhance your online course content. 

Simplicity

I have seen many online facilitators become victims of the "more is better" concept. This is not the case when developing a course site. Realize that students do not enroll in online courses to see all the "bells and whistles" you can put into a site. Improper use of fonts, colors, and graphics (to name a few) can serve as a distraction and hamper the effectiveness of your course.
When confronted with too many moving and repeating objects, some students may become annoyed and distracted. If necessary, try to keep these repetitive features to a minimum. If you require the use of such animations, limit the number of times they loop and even limit the speed in which this is accomplished.

Simplicity must also be applied in choosing the most visual aspect of your course, the background. When the background is busy and loud, text becomes distorted and users are once again distracted from the actual content of the page. I have found a white background to be the most effective. The use of fonts and colors are also extremely important. Keeping color and font variations to a minimum can help keep your site design "simple."

 Consistency

Consistency can greatly reduce the time initially required to master the use of your course site, particularly for faculty teaching online for the first time. This is important for both cognitive and motivational reasons. Consistency across pages can reduce the load on cognitive processing. If learning to use the site is a quick and painless process, learners are quickly motivated to continue. If they have trouble, they are much more likely to lose interest in the course.

Consistencies should include:

  • colors
  • backgrounds
  • fonts
  • headings
  • text layout
  • folder management
  • icons
  • placement of course materials

On the other hand, if used correctly and infrequently, changing formats can quickly grab a learner's attention. These inconsistencies might include a highlighted button to indicate location, or an altered color scheme to indicate a change of topic.


 Creating Identity/Personalizing your Course

Taking into consideration the fact that your course site is a physical place, you need to consider the purpose of your site. What is the general "look" you are trying to convey? The graphic design of a course site must not only be appropriate to the overall subject matter, it should also set the "tone" for the learner's experience. A quick review of publicly accessible courses will demonstrate the range of styles chosen by course designers:

  • fun
  • professional
  • simple
  • high tech
  • slick

Personalizing your course site is also important!  There are many ways in which this can be achieved--some examples include adding:

  1. a course banner
  2. a personal picture within "Staff Information"
  3. cartoons which express your personality (Remember not to over do it--remain simple!)
  4. personal audio clips conveying reinforcement

Also remember to set proper "availabilities" within your Blackboard's control panel.  These course options allow you to customize your course by making only the features you will use "available" to students.  For example: If you don't use Blackboard's online gradebook feature, mark it "unavailable" in order to discard the access icon from the course site.


 User-Friendly Navigation

One of the most important elements of your course design is navigation! You need to take time to seriously map out your navigational scheme, remembering to remain consistent from page to page. Once set, you should also spend time navigating your site from the student prospective. It's also not a bad idea to have others test your site and its navigation.

As you know, Blackboard has already given you a head-start when it comes to navigation. Every page on the course site can be easily reached....more or less :-) This structure was provided by Blackboard Inc. for students to readily find course information, documents, assignments, etc. Improvements can be made to further enhance the "user friendliness" of the course. Adding internal links within Blackboard, clearly labeling content folders, removing unused icons and buttons, using banners or images to remind your students of their location, are just some examples.
Compatibility

Be sure to consider "standards of compatibility" when creating your course site. Your site should be platform, resolution, and browser friendly. If your course site is not compatible for all viewers, you may need to consider creating additional resources to accommodate exceptions.

What if one of my student's uses a MAC to view my course? What browsers are my students using? (AOL, Netscape, IE, CompuServe...) What's the common screen resolution my students are using? These are all important questions. Realize that pleasing everyone is IMPOSSIBLE!! It's understandable to set platform, browser, and resolution requirements at the beginning of the course. Even though this can alleviate some stress, you should still be aware of the issues. I have found that 90% of "technical" problems students have are related to their systems configuration. Realize that not all your students will adapt their systems around your course!


 Universality

To take "compatibility" a step further,  to make your course truly accessible from anywhere one must consider the use of applications when designing a course site.  Within Blackboard, it's simple to upload almost any document created in one of many popular applications  (i.e.; Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Lotus etc...) But is this simple and fast method the most effective? Realize that by uploading any such document you are requiring your students to have the application on their system in order to view the material.  For example, if you upload your syllabus which was created in MS Word your students will need MS Word in order to view it!  What if your student uses WordPerfect?  

Using HTML to create and maintain course sites is a technique which I have adopted and taught to many online facilitators. This method permits easy access of course materials and requires no application on the student's computer...only a browser is needed! This technique allows for "anywhere" access giving your course universality.

Does this mean you need to learn HMTL? NO!!  There are many ways to creat HTML pages which can be easily incorporated into Blackboard.  Some include:

  • Using an HTML editor.  There are many of them in the market and some can even be downloaded from the web.  One I recommend to faculty is MS FrontPage which resembles MS Word.
  • Your Netscape browser contains a built-in feature (Netscape Composer) which also acts as an HTML editor.
  • Many word processing applications now contain conversion tools which can convert your documents into HTML automatically.

Course Design for Disabled Students

Special consideration is needed when designing web pages/sites which will be view by students with disabilities. Some tips include:

  • Images & Animations - Use the alt tag attribute to describe the function of each visual.
  • Multimedia - Provide captioning and transcripts of audio, and descriptions of video.
  • Hypertext links - Use text that makes sense when read out of context. For example, avoid "click here".
  • Scripts, applets, and plug-ins - Provide alternative content in case active features are inaccessible or unsupported.

Course design for disabled students is a vast topic!  The following are some web sites with useful information. Please Note--making ALL the necessary alterations to your course site (especially within Blackboard) is impossible.  Future releases of Blackboard promise to take all "special needs" into consideration.

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