Planning and organizing learning materials in a deliberate and student-centered manner helps to increase learner retention and completion of the online course.
Module Organization
- Organizing Materials
- Scaffolding
- Sequencing | Macro Level | Micro Level
- Chunking | Text | Video/Audio
- Evaluating Your Course Design | Essential | Best Practice | Exemplary
Organizing Materials
Now that you've got your major assessments decided upon and scaffolded for the semester, it's time for the final step in Backward Design: planning student's daily learning experiences.
The organization and types of your course materials will determine how you deliver them in Blackboard, which you will learn about later in this unit.
Now, lets focus on three key student-centered organizational techniques for online learning: scaffolding, sequencing, and chunking. There is significant overlap between these three processes and their use in instructional design, and using all three together will produce the best results.
Scaffolding assignments and lesson materials is a great way to prevent plagiarism. You get to see the progress of the student's work from beginning to end.
As you learned in unit 2, scaffolding asks you to break down assessments into smaller units that build upon each other.
Your lesson materials should be similarly organized to support students in preparing for the assessments, and therefore aligned with course objectives. Begin with the basics and build up to more complex materials.
While scaffolding is an important part of planning assessments, organizing lessons relies more heavily on sequencing and chunking.
Student attention spans vary depending on the structure of the learning experience. Sequence materials to keep students engaged.
Just like you sequence assessments, lesson materials also need to be sequenced. When considering sequencing of lesson materials, both the macro (the sequence across the whole course) and micro (the sequence of individual modules/lessons) need to be considered.
Macro Level: Sequencing Content Across the Course
Spaced repetition is an instructional design technique that meaningfully repeats information/practices that is important for learners to remember. Studies have shown that if repetition is spaced over time, learners are more likely to retain the repeated information.
For example, if you bring up a key term in week one, you might choose to incorporate it into a low-stakes quiz that also covers the materials of week two or three.
A course map like the one you have been filling out throughout this training is useful in seeing how individual lesson content can be sequenced at a course level.
Micro Level: Sequencing a Module/Lesson
In an online class, it can be tempting and easy to incorporate a lot of text-based materials. However, too much text can at best overwhelm learners and at worst make them quit or skip the lesson.
Sequence your lessons to include multiple means of representation in a varied order can help keep students engaged. For example a lesson might begin with a short reading, followed up by a mini-lecture via recorded PowerPoint, then another short reading and end with another video, this time a TedTalk.
In addition to the content students are learning, sequence learning activities into the lessons. For example, the lesson outlined above might ask students to write a discussion post after watching the TedTalk.
Asking students to regularly engage with the materials they have learned will keep students invested in the course and help them to better understand and retain the materials.
Chunking is based on principles of working memory and learning to ensure materials are arranged in a way to maximize learner retention.
Chunking is a design strategy that breaks up content into short, "bite-sized" pieces that are easier to complete in one sitting and easier to remember, grouping like-pieces together. Chunking should be done deliberately with each chunk having a specific and focused topic or theme.
If this seems familiar, its because you've already done some chunking by breaking up your course into units/modules in unit one. In this unit, we are going to focus on how to chunk individual lesson materials.
Chunking Text
Assigned readings should be broken down into manageable amounts.
If you are creating your own materials, you have a bit more control over the chunking.
Heavy blocks of text should be avoided through the use of line/paragraph breaks and bulleted or numbered lists.
Text should be organized so the amount of information per screen is also limited by chunking. This can be controlled in Blackboard by using learning modules. You'll learn more about this in the next lesson.
Chunking Video and Audio
Chunking is also important when it comes video or audio content.
It is a common misconception that the video format alone is enough to keep students engaged for longer periods of time in online learning.
ACUE recommends presenting information to students in microlectures, which are 6 minute or less video or audio lectures.
Be judicious in your chunking.
Not all content is better chunked. Don't chunk material if breaking it up interferes with the meaning of the content. For example, if you were teaching a course on politics and pop culture you wouldn't want to ask students to watch The Manchurian Candidate five minutes at a time.
On the other hand, don't include extra, unrelated bits of information in a chunk. If you have chunked your learning materials and have found that some bits of information don't fit, ask yourself how necessary those bits are for students to achieve the learning outcomes. Chunking forces us to prioritize content.
Essential Design
Course content is organized in learning units such as modules.
Images and names used in the course reflect a diverse range of people shown in a positive light.
Mechanisms for regular and substantive interaction such as financial aid check-ins, an Ask a Question discussion, course announcements, and a clearly stated communication policy are included in the course.
Course incorporates at least one engagement strategy such as active learning, collaboration, or critical thinking.
Learning materials and learning activities support topics and concepts included in course content and assessments.
Resources are current and relevant to course.
Best Practice Design
Naming conventions used in course are clear and hierarchically sequenced using numbers, weeks , or topic names
Humor and idioms used in course are appropriate and adequately explained.
Course includes community building opportunities such as group work, peer review, and/or class discussions.
Course incorporates two or more engagement strategies such as active learning, collaboration, and critical thinking.
Instructor has used a course map to align course content and learning activities with assessments, course outcomes, and module-level objectives.
Resources are provided in a variety of mediums such as written, video, audio, etc. to support the needs of diverse learners.
Exemplary Design
Content is sequenced, chunked, and scaffolded.
Students are provided opportunities to connect their learning to their backgrounds and personal lives.
Students are offered a choice of how to engage with course content, the instructor, and their classmates when appropriate.
Students are provided opportunities to share their personal experiences.
Course incorporates three or more engagement strategies such as active learning, collaboration, and critical thinking.
A course map, or another means of understanding how course content and learning activities align with assessments, course outcomes and module-level objectives, is provided for students.
Course content includes opportunities for students to explore beyond the required content and outcomes.
Credits:
Created with images by STIL - "washi planning" • Ricardo Gomez Angel - "Shadows" • Kelly Sikkema - "Ideas waiting to be had" • Joshua Rawson-Harris - "find more at @joshrh19 (Instagram)" • Hal Gatewood - "untitled image" • Mae Mu - "Enjoy your meal! I would love to hear your comments! Check out my Instagram @picoftasty more surprise there! Any questions please don't hesitate to ask." • Romain Vignes - "Focus definition" • Sara Kurfeß - "untitled image" • Scott Graham - "Brainstorming over paper"