I took my first online class over 20 years ago and thought to myself, “This course is so well organized.”, and then I took others that confused me to no end. I reflected on which aspects of the courses worked well, even back then before many of the tools we have available today existed, and which aspects did not work so well. Now, I follow a few key principles when designing my online courses, and as a result, I routinely receive comments from undergraduate students stating that these courses are of the most well-organized and manageable online courses they have taken. Let’s take a look at why that might be the case.

Assign activities in a variety of modalities

In each online course I teach, one of the main components are the activities within Connect that account for a variety of learning modality preferences. I tend to assign a combination of auto-graded activities targeting processing at both the key term and discourse length levels in both audio-based and written activities, multiple choice activities, drag and drop activities, paragraph comprehension, and assessable video tutorials. Furthermore, I assign the Adaptive Learning Activities and quizzes as a follow up to the regular Connect homework itself. This tends to be the best way to reinforce student learning. Outside of the auto-graded Connect work, I include Voice Prompts, to which students have to reply to ‘on the spot’, a few end-of-module partner-based tasks using the Recordable Video Chat function, and then multi-step interactive asynchronous written discussion board posts or video discussion boards. 

Maintain consistent deadlines throughout the week

Typically, online classes use 11:59pm as a common deadline for homework submission, however, for some classes, I prefer to use an 8:00am deadline on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. At first, 8:00am deadlines seem cruel or unusual, but I explain to students that I recognize that they might work until late at night and by the time they get home from work, they might not have enough time to complete their homework, and that I figured they would appreciate the extra time to work on their assignments. This tends to convince them that they are advantaged by this later deadline, as opposed to disadvantaged by an earlier one. In order to make sure that students remember the morning deadline, I encourage them to enter a reminder on their phones for the day prior. I prefer to have multiple deadlines throughout the week in an effort to help students manage their time appropriately. 

Learning objectives with a predictable workload

Preparing students with an estimated amount of time they will likely spend on each assignment or activity type in the course has proven to be helpful to avoid trying to crunch a three-hour assignment into 30 minuters. During the first week of class, I send out an announcement titled “How to be successful in this course”, which includes a list of the assignment types, a brief description, and a time estimate. In that same email, I lay out a sample week for them, the assignments due on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and how long they should allocate for each of the deadlines on each of the assignments. I also remind them that they should expect a similar workload throughout the entire semester by sending out an announcement every Thursday titled “Next week at glance.” On the occasion that there is a project due, or a marked variation of the activity amounts, I include that information in the week’s prior announcement.

Ultimately, my goal is to maintain consistency in course design so that students can consistently be set up for success and balance their academics along with their many other responsibilities.