Course Design - Final Thoughts

This was an interesting course, we learned about so many different components that are necessary for designing an online course. Not just any online course, my online course. Up until now everything has been theoretical; it was something that went into the class I was taking. Now I was actually applying the knowledge to start bringing my course to life. There are many aspects of course design that I find challenging, but there are two that really standout.

One is writing objectives; I thought I could simply state what I wanted done. Wrong. I read the resources and looked at many websites for inspiration and ended up more confused. An example from: A Quick Guide to Writing Learning Objectives

• Select a verb for performing the task.


• Determine if the verb you have chosen best describes the type of behavior that the learners need to display after training (see Bloom's Taxonomy).


• Under what conditions must the task be performed?


• Determine to what standards the task must be performed.


• Sample outlines for writing a learning objective:
  

If this was the quick guide, what was the long guide? The sample outlines consisted of sentences with blanks where you could put in your tasks, conditions and standards. This did not help, so I looked at more websites and finally tried to write the objectives. I ended up with short statements, which did not help me when it came time to write my student to student interactions. I had given myself nothing to work with and that's when it hit me. If I wasn't able to read my learning objectives and know exactly what was expected then how would my students. So I did more research, reread the resources, looked at the feedback I had received and tried again. I have by no means perfected writing learning objects, but I am getting closer. And you know what? It is okay that my learning objectives weren't perfect the first time, because they will never be perfect. I will continue to rework them to make them better and when I need inspiration I will read: Writing Good Work Objectives

"Writing good work objectives is not easy. This is true whether you are writing them for yourself or for someone else. Getting at meaningful content for a work objective requires you to think at length and in depth about the work to be performed. It is unlikely that you will be able to sit down and dash off a set of finished work objectives. Instead, you will have to write them, think them over, rewrite them, then rewrite them again." (Nickols, 2000)

So, I am doing ok. I plan on reading and reworking my learning objectives as many times as needed. It is not only my learning objectives that I will continue reworking, I am going to work on all of my weak areas. It may sound like a cliche but I want my class to be the best that I can possibly design. So in saying that I will work on my rubrics, student communications, and making sure that everything is clearly written and understandable.