Starting Your Online Course- Course Design Suggestions from STUDENTS

As you get started with your semester, we have some reminders about department suggestions, and some feedback specifically from students about things they prefer as we all get used to Canvas.

Department Expectations

Remember as you are teaching that you should be present on a regular basis in your course.  This means that you should be logging in to your email and to Canvas several days each week, and participating.  In an online space, it’s easy for you to feel like you are present (for example you logging in to read discussion posts nearly every day), but students don’t “see” you unless you reply to emails, post announcements, or comment in discussion threads.  As you log in, make an effort to be visible so students know that you are working behind the scenes to help them in your course.

As you prepare your synchronous sessions, remember that you should maximize active learning, and avoid long lecture sessions to avoid Zoom fatigue.  Our best practice is to use about 90 minutes of your 3 hours on Zoom, with lots of engaging activities.  You should use the remainder of your 3 hours to take a break, have students view recorded lecture, participate in group work, individual activities, instructor check ins, etc.  This helps keep things fresh for students, and gives a chance to move and get away from the computer for a bit.

Student Tips!

Last fall, I had two SW students offer to provide me with some feedback about how we use Canvas, and they had some great suggestions that are easy to implement, but make a big difference on the student end in Canvas:

1. Remove materials that don’t match your specific course modality. Do you teach a fully synchronous course?  Removing or unpublishing discussion boards and other asynchronous activities if you aren’t using them helps students avoid having stressful notifications of upcoming due dates, or a grade of “zero” on an assignment that they weren’t expected to complete.  This is an easy way to reduce anxiety for your students.
2. Update your due dates. Similar to number 1, Students like to have these available on the course calendar, and they get notifications based on the calendar due dates.  When you have the wrong due date, it can be stressful for students.
3. Make the Assignments and/or Discussions tab available in course navigation. Students like to have assignments and discussions available in the modules, but ALSO like to have a way to access these materials quickly in course navigation.  You can easily enable these features by going to each course > choosing settings in the navigation menu > opening the navigation tab > in the lower box, simply click on the 3 dots to the right of each item you want to make available, and click enable.  Of course, if you don’t use discussions in your course, there’s no need to open that link in course navigation.  You can always personalize this availability depending on your preference in your course.
4. Provide key takeaways from weekly course content. Students value your expertise, so helping them to know what things are most important can help them to process the readings and other materials in a way that they can apply them in course activities.  This doesn’t mean you need to recap the whole chapter, but adding this information to an announcement, or recording a quick video highlighting 2-3 things that will be most relevant is one way to help students focus on content for the week.

As you start off with your semester, hopefully these are easy ways to check your course design, and engagement in your course as you begin developing community in your classes, and relationships with your students!