What to Expect from an Online Course - A Teacher's Perspective

Article by:
Terence Armentano
Instructional Designer and Online Facilitator

What to expect from an Online Course – A Teacher’s Perspective
Since I have both assisted college faculty with course design as an Instructional Designer and facilitated Masters level online courses, I have come to learn first- hand what teachers can expect from an online course. Depending on how well an instructor prepares an online course, facilitating one can be a great adventure full of exciting discussion and engaging assessments resulting in a rich learning community, or it could be a confusing information dump with little interaction resulting in bitter students and low or no future enrollment. So to answer the question of what an instructor can expect in teaching an online course, I would say that you can expect to get out of it what you put into it. Faculty teaching online at BGSU have the opportunity to work with the IDEAL Group, Instructional Designers, Multimedia Developers, and e-Learning Specialists, to ensure the highest quality online courses.

Preparation Phase: At least 3 months before start date
I am a newlywed, and I could not help but notice that preparing for an online course is like planning a wedding. There are a lot of decisions that need to be made up front so that when the day comes, you can thoroughly enjoy it. You can spend more time talking with your guests and sharing stories rather than having to worry about baking a cake the day of the wedding, or trying to get a limo to take you to the reception. The more time you spend preparing your course, the fewer snags you will have throughout the course and the more time you will have to interact with the students, facilitate meaningful discussion, and effectively facilitate the course!

• During the preparation phase, teachers will set up the course by creating their course modules in Blackboard. A module is like a weekly lesson plan which includes all reading material, assignments, quizzes, etc. Instructors have the option to work with Instructional Designers from IDEAL who specialize in online delivery. The following could be included in a module:
  • Reading materials – Books, websites, lectures, etc.
  • Assignments and Assessment strategies – discussion questions, journals, group projects, writing assignments, critiques, e-portfolios, presentations, case studies, debates, traditional timed exams, open book exams, graded quizzes, self assessment quizzes, etc.
  • Communication/Participation requirements – Discussion Board, e-mail, chat
• It is very important that students know exactly what is expected of them at all times so a detailed syllabus should be created to set student expectations such as reading materials, assignments, tests, participation requirements, and all due dates.
• Once you have all of your modules built and the preparation phase is complete, you will enjoy the fruits of your labor and can focus on interaction and feedback during the delivery of the course.

2 Weeks before the start of class

• E-mail your students the course syllabus, introduce yourself, set student expectations, and give them access to the course so they can look around and explore the online classroom before the official start date.

Facilitation Phase – These are common activities during my facilitation phase

• Once class has begun, I include a welcome announcement in Blackboard explaining all facets of the classroom and setting my students’ expectations again. Repetition of information is a key in online facilitation.
• Throughout facilitation, you can expect many questions from students. For this reason, I created a “Questions for the Instructor” forum in the Discussion Board so that all questions are streamlined to a central location for all students to see and learn from. I let them know about this in my welcome announcement on Day 1.
• If you have a weekly classroom discussion at the Discussion Board (which I highly recommend) you can expect to spend a few hours per week adding your personal insight and expertise to the discussion and helping coach students to critically think and explore the topic further. I outline the student discussion board participation expectations in the syllabus, welcome announcement, and at the discussion board. Again, with the repetition.
• Every week I communicate updates, changes, summary of weekly lessons learned, and other major announcements using the Announcements feature in Blackboard. If it is a very important announcement, you may want to also e-mail the message to your students.
• Try to update grades and provide feedback every week to help the online students stay on task and motivated.

The result of a teacher who takes adequate time to design and prepare their online course will enjoy facilitating the course for many years.

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