Online Course Development

There has been a shift at my online school this year. We are now being asked to develop "modules" instead of entire classes. The idea is for us to develop multiple modules during the school year that can be pulled together to create anything from a unit that a traditional classroom teacher can use to an entire class.

I am really curious about how other online teachers go about creating classes from the ground up. Where do you begin? How do you decide what lessons to include? How do you determine what types of lessons you will use? I know the answers to these questions depend on so many factors.

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Permalink Reply by Cory Plough on December 9, 2008 at 10:01am

Its very similar to how you would develop a f2f class. I get out the standards, try to determine the most important ones (can't hit all of them) then create a timeline. Each Unit/module in the timeline will have certain lessons that you need to hit your standards. So I create an outline of lessons for that unit and every subsequent unit after that. Then I brainstorm ideas that I want the lessons to teach and that's where the creativity comes in. For each lesson, I try to imagine devising scenarios or situations where students could need the information/idea you are getting across in the real world. I will write up the lesson using the scenarios, for example: Pretend you are a travel agent and you are trying to sell a couple a trip to Ireland. Create a presentation where you demonstrate the must-see sites of a trip (landmarks) and a short history of ______, ______, ______ .

I research or create the tools to fit that vision for the lesson. Typing it up, adapt if needed, include multiple resources links/videos/presentations......

In one of my courses for my CT school, we have modules but they treat them like units for the semester. What are your modules supposed to look like if they can be both a unit or a class? Can you define module to me because I've never used it except to mean a bundle of material that forms a unit of study.

Permalink Reply by Beth Still on December 9, 2008 at 10:40am

That is exactly how I create my courses. I usually have three to five units in a semester course. My units are equivalent to "modules."

I think the idea behind creating modules is so that we are not so overwhelmed with creating entire courses. Facing the task of creating two entire year-long classes can seem a bit daunting to teachers who are new to course development! Basically we are taking a course and breaking it down into smaller, more manageable pieces. Right now I am working on a US History class that has 4 units: World War I, The Roaring 20's, Great Depression, and World War II. Each unit will be approximately 4 weeks in length. The idea is that if a traditional classroom teacher wanted to just use one of those units then they could just use those lessons. This is what our local schools have asked for. In my opinion this is going to be a complete waste of time. Teachers would have to have access to computers for up to a month at a time. That is not an option for most teachers.

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