Introduction to Course

The purpose of this course is to provide resources and methods for developing and managing quality online courses. While instructors might use different course management systems, the accepted best practices for eLearning can be applied to all online courses.

The goals of this course focus on:

• Preparing participants to become effective online instructors by discussing the essential skills necessary for teaching online.
• Collecting effective practices and strategies for teaching online.

Portions of the content included have been adapted from Larry Ragan's "Best Practices in Online Teaching", which holds a Creative Commons attribution license. Other content has been adapted from Liz Stover's "Best Practices for Distance Learning".

Course Objectives

Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:

• Perform essential preparation tasks prior to teaching the course
• Create measurable learning objectives
• Develop course activities that meet the stated learning objectives.
• Articulate an instructor's role in an online learning environment
• Develop appropriate strategies for promoting active learning
• Recognize learner characteristics or styles and apply appropriate strategies to monitor and facilitate students' online learning
• Apply effective strategies for facilitating and assessing learning activities
• Manage your time, workload, and administrative issues related to teaching effectively online

Course Structure

This course contains:

• Introduction: Learn about the Best Practices course and what you will find here.
• Module 1: Getting Started focuses on preparing yourself, your course, and your students for a constructive learning community.
• Module 2: Creating Course Content describes methods to create measurable learning objectives and effective course activities.
• Module 3: During Teaching identifies many critical tasks necessary to create an active, interactive, and motivating learning environment for your students.
• Module 4: Pulling it All Together summarizes helpful tips, including managing your workload.

Each module includes an Introduction section to provide an overview of the module and a number of lessons.

Each lesson includes practices important to effective online teaching. Most lessons include sections labeled "CFCC Course Essentials", "What to do?", "Why do it?", and "How to do it?" respectively.

• CFCC Course Essentials identifies which of the 25 CFCC Course Essentials standards is addressed in the lesson. These standards were agreed upon by the CFCC Distance Learning Committee and the Distance Learning Department as being critical in developing and delivering quality online courses.
• What to do? Summarizes each effective online teaching practice in one or two sentences.
• Why do it? Presents a succinct literature citation to support the effective online teaching practices listed under "What to do?" from both theoretical research and practical experiences.
• How to do it? Lists suggestions for you to achieve the purposes listed under "What to do?" Included are examples from our real courses for your reference.

Credits

Modules 1,3, and 4 were adapted from Larry Ragan's "Best Practices in Online Teaching" (Creative Commons Attribution license) .

Module 2 (Creating Course Content) was developed by Liz Stover.

References for Introduction

McDaniel, M. (2009, March 20). Online student experience [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWPI35WGsTc

Ragan, L. (2007, August 28). Best Practices in Online Teaching. Retrieved from the Connexions Web site: http://cnx.org/content/col10453/

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