What kind of course is eligible to be developed as an online course?
- Almost any type of course can be designed to fit in an online or hybrid model. Even science and other lab courses have been adapted for distance delivery.
- If you don't think your course would be appropriate to offer online, you can still design an online element for your course to enhance the student learning experience.
Web enhanced classes are face-to-face (sometimes called brick and mortar) classes that have supplementary content placed online for students to use outside of the classroom.
- Hybrid classes have some face-to-face meetings, but have a significant amount of class work and student contact happening online in a structured format.
- Online classes take place 100 percent online with all projects, instruction, assessment and communication taking place in an online environment.
Developing an online or hybrid class can be quite time consuming, you may also find that communicating with students may take up more of your time that in the face-to-face class environment.
- Once you have developed your online class you can continue to use those materials; your WebAccess course "shell" can be migrating to each new semester
- Having some online materials can actually save you time as you can refer students to your online shell for a copy of your syllabus, handouts, PowerPoint's and other course materials.
CSM offers a Distance Education Resource Center where you can meet one-on-one with an instructional designer to plan and design your course.
How will my individual student contact time change in an online or hybrid course?
Generally speaking you will spend more time communicating with students via email or using discussion tools that you do in a face-to-face class. It will be important to develop a plan for how you are going to conduct communication with students, for example how long should students expect to wait to hear back from you if they send you an email. how long they should wait before expecting assignments to be graded, etc. This information should be available for students in your syllabus.
You can provide opportunities for communication and facilitate communication among students in many different ways. Here are some examples of communication activities you can consider:
How can I make sure that my online course is accessible to students with disabilities?
As you design your web-enhanced, hybrid or online course there are several basic things to keep in mind:
- Any videos that you post must be captioned
- Any audio files must have a transcription
- Stick with predetermined fonts and font colors
- Try to have a consistent look and feel in your site and make site organization as clean and clear as possible
You may be familiar with using copyrighted works in the classroom setting, and many of the rules of fair usage do apply to online materials providing that your materials are in a password protected space such as WebAccess. You may want to consult with the librarians at CSM for specific cases if you have doubts.
