Designing Content

In a traditional classroom setting the instructor is present with the students when reading them a lecture, or having a discussion. Students hear the voice, intonations, see the instructor’s face expressions, in other words sense the tone of the lecture or a discussion and adopt the appropriate impressions.
In an online setting, the instructor’s presence is especially important for students. The tone of writing, feedback in the DB, e-mails, the structure of the course and the way the instructor presents the material all contribute to the instructor’s personality as students sense it. To insure this presence (sometimes referred to as “human presence) an instructor might want to write lectures for an online course using some principles of e-Personality, a term introduced by Peter Chepya, the explanation of which can be found in his article “e-Personality”. 

The combination of a well-designed and organized course and a “human” teaching is the biggest part of an online course success.
It is advised that the content is planned out, designed and developed before the course begins: the instructor can focus on just teaching the course with minor editing if needed, and the students have the benefit of a well thought out course to learn from.
Choose what material should be covered in the course to achieve the goals and objectives.

• Divide the material into reasonable size lessons
• Organize the material in a timeline (do not specify dates yet)
• Design and create the activities to support each lesson and include them in a timeline
• Create topics for the Discussion Board for each lesson
• Design and develop assessment tools for the entire course
• Determine if a midterm is necessary for the course
• Organize all of the above in one timeline and include the dates

The OIT team is happy to meet with you, discuss your course objectives and possible content, and talk about options of how to design and organize the content for your online course. We will be able to contribute our time and expertise to meet your needs or we will advise you about how to find other resources. We also will be providing training in organizing your courses through our workshops.

Our contact information:

Dr. David Demers
Director of Instructional Technology
(203) 396-8369
Christopher Neidig
Digital Learning Support Technician
(203) 365-7613
Ekaterina Ginzburg
Digital Learning Support Technician
(203) 365-7613