Always keep in mind two design principles: make sure that your course objectives are defined in terms of the learning outcomes that you want students to be able to demonstrate and that you align all activities, assignments, and assessments with those expected learning outcomes.

-Susan Ko and Steve Rossen from Teaching Online: A Practical Guide

Objectives and Outcomes

Since most of you are already in the field of education, you likely need no introduction to foundational issues such as course goals, course objectives, and learning outcomes, though certainly it is easy to become confused by the increasing number of terms.

For our purposes, course objectives, instructional objectives, learning objectives, learning outcomes, behavioral objectives and performance objectives (whatever their semantic baggage) are all pretty much the same; that is, they refer to what the student will achieve at the end of the course.

And that's our focus here.

What the student will achieve at the end of the course.

Without question, learning outcomes (let's use that term) are key to the design and development process.

1. First you are given (or you select) the course topics.
2. Then you convert those course topics into learning outcomes (what the student will achieve at the end of the course)
3. Then you make certain your activities, assignments, and assessments help the student achieve those outcomes.

That's the core of class design.

There is, of course, the whole issue of writing specific, observable, and measurable outcomes.

Most of you are probably familiar with the ABCD model of writing objectives (learning outcomes) and have been counseled not use such words as 'appreciate,' 'believe,' 'enjoy,' 'internalize,' 'know,' 'learn,' and 'understand' when creating objectives--not because they aren't worthy goals, but... well, because they can't be measured.

For many, the key to creating effective learning is to establish outcomes that can be measured.

Others might be a little more cautious about letting issues of measurement become the driving force in creating course inputs.

But almost no one denies the importance of measurement.

The crucial point here, however, is that the act of creating learning outcomes is key to the process of designing your online class--primarily because they are the best and most important guides you have to help select your course inputs (assignments, learning activities, content, peer-to-peer connections, use of Web, etc.) which produce those course outputs (learning outcomes).

For a quick review on creating learning objectives, the Orientation to College Teaching site, sponsored by San Francisco State University, offers a nice, quick visual overview. The types of learning objectives is especially helpful, as is the brief section on Writing Objectives (this includes the ABCE model). The entire site also functions as a useful design and development process.

 

The Readings

It looks like a lot of reading this week, but the Ko and Rossen reads fast and most of you have already read a good portion of it ("When Low-Tech is High-Tech Enough") in OTL 502.

The purpose of the reading selection is to help give you practical and useful information in putting together your online syllabus and thinking about the structure of your online course.

We'll talk about some of these issues in the Module Two Discussion Forum.

This week, we start asking for specific deliverables in your personal Blackboard class.

By the end of the module, you should have uploaded your syllabus--but not a syllabus appropriate for a typical ground class, rather one that is appropriate for online.

Also, this is the week we begin our Development Notes.

Check the Discussion Board for a special forum on Development Notes. Also check the Module Two Discussion Forum for a thread specifically on creating an online syllabus.