Are you now teaching at home due to the coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic? Are you looking to get your class set up quickly and simply?

We can help get your class set up based on standard instructional design principles and online design. If you are being thrown into teaching online what was formerly your in-class curriculum and course design, we can help get you going!

Among the many items you will need to consider, and perhaps seek assistance with:

• Recording and/or delivering video content
• Building understandable rubrics
• Building modules in a logical and consistent manner
• ADA compliance and copyright law
• Your presence in the course (instructor accessibility)
• Assignment, quiz & exam creation
  
• Basic Rich-Text Formatting (RTF) and HTML to build content pages
• Open Educational Resources (OER)

Our consultants have years of online teaching and design experience, and we can tell you from that, it is not as simple as just dropping your course material into Canvas, Moodle, Bb, or D2L, there are basic design principles that need to be met in order for your students to have a navigable course presented to them.

While online instruction has found a permanent place in academia, preparing instructors to work and thrive in the online space has not kept pace with course volume (Terantino & Agbehonou, 2012), and if you are now teaching at home due to coronavirus, you might be less prepared than you think. As the number of online offerings continues to grow (NCES, 2016), well-designed courses, thoughtful and efficient instructional strategies, and support for instructors is essential (Lehman & Conceiḉão, 2014), and as argued by Arbaugh (2014), “a resource-strapped…school may get the most ‘bang for its buck’ by allocating resources towards developing instructors when contemplating how best to support its online and blended offerings” (p.660).

The purpose of instructional design is to aide in improved course delivery by, “prescribing optimal methods of instruction to bring about desired changes in student knowledge and skills” (Reigeluth, 2013, p.4), and according to Koehler and Mishra (2005), a good course design serves as an “anchor around which the class (and learning) happens” (p.135). Yet, Johnson et al. (2015) found that instructors who are not properly trained in course design usually attempt to recreate the in-class version, regardless of the known differences in the online versus in-class learning environment.

Quality course design is directly related to student success, and well-designed courses can allow for online offerings to be just as successful, in terms of grade distribution and student retention, as face-to-face courses.

There exists a vast body of research going back over 25 years to support the claim that instructors need to be present in the online class environment for students to be motivated, engaged, responsive, and successful (for early research on this topic, see Arbaugh 2000a, 2000b, 2000c; Arbaugh & Duray, 2002; Atkinson & Kydd, 1997; Marks, Sibley, & Arbaugh, 2005). Mishra and Mehta (2017) stated that technology cannot be seen as a replacement for the instructor, and further, instructors need to be content and pedagogical experts as well as technology experts.

Richardson et al. (2015) defined “instructor presence” as the overlap of teaching and the social presence of the course’s lead individual. The social presence of other students in the class is just as vital, in that humans are inherently social beings, and a sense of group cohesion, interaction, and commitment to the goal of learning and successfully completing the class acts as the social glue in the online environment (Boston et al., 2009; Garrison & Arbaugh, 2007; Oztok & Brett, 2011; Shea & Bidjerano, 2009; Swan, Garrison, & Richardson, 2009).

 

Further, actual student learning as well as a student’s perception of learning are linked to the presence of the instructor in an online course (Hostetter & Busch, 2013; Joksimović, Gašević, Kovanović, Riecke, & Hatala, 2015; Picciano, 2002; Shea, Li, & Pickett, 2006), as is reported satisfaction with an individual instructor (Richardson & Swan, 2003) and with a course overall (Akyol & Garrison, 2008; Hostetter & Busch, 2006; Khalid & Quick, 2016). Both Boston et al. (2009) and Lehman and Conceiḉão (2014) found that increased instructor presence in online courses led to higher retention rates, while Shea and Bidjerano (2014) revealed that students who engaged in online coursework during the early terms of their degree track were more likely to be successful in obtaining a credential.

Hodges and Cowan (2012) along with Sheridan and Kelly (2010) reported that students placed a higher value on instructors if they perceived them as being responsive, Wise, Chang, Duffy, and Valle (2004) stated that the social presence of the instructor resulted in students viewing them as “helpful” and “caring,” and Lehman and Conceiḉão (2014) claimed that instructor presence made other students and the instructor feel “real” as opposed to just names on a roster.

Considered important emerging research at the time, Chidambaram (1996) and Walther (1992) discussed what was termed computer-mediated communications, or CMC, and argued that Internet-based courses could be as intimate as in-person courses if the former were designed to be flexible and engaging.

Students have a right to expect that their work is being graded fairly – in such a manner that the same standards are applied – and to know what they will be graded on before they attempt the assignment. The use of rubrics is thought to improve instruction, program evaluation, and perhaps most importantly, student learning and achievement in a course (Reddy & Andrade, 2010; Schneider, 2006). Students may even rely on rubrics to help in charting their path through a course (Keefer-Reynolds, 2010).

For a bibliography of references related to online learning and operations, including the citations listed above, click here.

A note about rates: We are educators just like you. We’re not out to scam or overcharge you; we are a registered LLC in the state of Kansas (CJD Consulting Solutions, LLC, DBA Compita Consulting). We’ll work with you and within your budget, be that personal or supported by your institution, to get you the right number of support hours to get you set up and running from home. Should you desire ongoing support, we can discuss that as well. But coming from an executive team of teachers and administrators, we are fully aware of how trying and sudden this crisis has been on resources. You have our promise to keep rates reasonable, and to provide you with the best service so that you can continue your mission of educating your students. If you are teaching at home due to coronavirus (or maybe you found us for some other reason!) we would love to help you get started — helping students succeed is our goal, too!