Course Design

Set guidelines and expectations

An important factor to think about when designing your online course is how you’ll communicate any guidelines or expectations. This is often especially important for online course design. Because you likely won’t have face-to-face time to remind the learners. Learners must have access to your guidelines and expectations directly at the start of your course. They ought to be easy to seek out and straightforward to know. Your guidelines and expectations will depend upon your particular course. But these are some things to think about. First, the minimum technology requirements. Will learners be ready to complete your course employing a mobile device? Or will they have to download software? Which needs them to possess a computer. Make sure that learners are conscious of what technology they’ll get to achieve success in your course. 

Next, share expectations regarding digital citizenship. Then help learners understand this idea. Examples are, communicating expectations about appropriate behaviors in online forums and discussions, respecting other people’s privacy, and being a responsible online learner. Allow them to know that you simply won’t tolerate any online bullying or inappropriate behaviors, language, or images. This might appear to be sensitive but it isn’t for everybody. Confirm learners know your expectations on this. Inform learners of your expectations on engagement. Allow them skills often they ought to engage with forums or discussion boards. If you post a rule, like you want to post 3 times before five o’clock on Friday, do not be surprised if you’ve got learners posting 3 times at 4:59 on Friday. If you would like them to move on the discussion boards and reply to other learner’s posts make this clear from the beginning. Next, share your expectations for the quantity of time you expect them to figure out on the course. Be upfront and honest with this and let learners express any concerns early. Establish guidelines for communication.

Let learners know that they ought to contact you if they need any issues. And inform them of the way to contact you. Whether it’s through the LMS, via email, phone, or another way. If you do not make this clear, expect some learners to use the excuse that they didn’t do something because they didn’t know what to do. It is also important to let your learners know when you’re available to reply. It’s unreasonable for a learner to send an email at 11 PM and expect you to urge back immediately. Protect some time by setting some parameters. Perhaps allow them to know the time of day that you’re going to respond. Whether you’ve got office hours when you will be online, or how long it typically takes you to reply, for instance, within 24 hours. One final recommendation is to take a quiz regarding course guidelines and expectations early in the course. And have students take this quiz. This may accomplish two things, it’ll make sure that the learners have checked out and understand the rules and expectations and it’ll familiarize learners with taking assessments on your platform.