How To Design A New Online Course This Semester?

Teaching courses online?or following a hybrid medium is similar to teaching in person. However, it has its challenges and concerns for both instructors and learners. Post-COVID, institutions have realized the importance of streamlining the online course content; hence the syllabi are now mainly hosted on LMS and online platforms.

While you can engage with students in a physical classroom and improvise on-spot, in a hybrid environment, it becomes a little difficult to keep up with the feedback on what you posted online. For this purpose, adopting an online course design approach has become integral, especially in an asynchronous environment.

So, how to design a course and convert it into a syllabus that helps your students in the long term? Let’s explore it together:

Developing The Online Course Structure?

The first step is to develop the online course curriculum and plan the structure around objectives and the unique needs of your students. It is essential to the learners' progress that they are aware of the goals, objectives, and the?outcome of the course?in advance.

Some questions that can help you structure course objectives include:

• What main learning goal do you want to achieve with your course?
• What do you expect students to take away from the course?
• What part of the course can be done online, and what has to be done in person?
• What is the overall efficiency level of the course and the students?

When you answer these questions, you can easily map out concrete objectives. In return, that will help you?design the curriculum and a syllabus?that will align with the learning content most effective for your target group.

Planning The Course Content & Syllabus

With the objectives in front of you, it is time to get creative. The?purpose of your course?shouldn’t be for learners to cram as much as they can but to purposefully take part in the valuable information. You would want to be creative with your content and include multi-purpose testing and learning activities such as:

• Academic reading material,
• Additional open-source content (videos, blogs, free courses, books, etc.),
• Assessments (quizzes, assignments, etc.),
• Online discussions,
• Group work,
• Problem-based learning and problem-solving activities

This is the biggest challenge of all. What’s important is to be aware of the?diversity in learners. Then, ensure that you meet the need of the learners by understanding the student demographics and specific requirements especially when it comes to hosting the course online.?

Organize The Content Effectively

You can plan?the most exciting course?in the world, but if the content is not organized effectively, it will not create the impact you expect. Therefore, in any course and syllabus, it is significant to consider how the learning content is organized. When the presentation is approached carefully, it can double down the student success and the impact of what you teach.

Well-organized online course content will be presented in the form of a clear structure and flow through a timely designed syllabus. This will make it easy for students to follow along, understand the material, and prepare in advance throughout the semester. Moreover, when they know what’s due, they will be better prepared to achieve their learning goals and ace their assessments.

If your institution-mandated LMS does not offer this opportunity or is time-consuming, BlendEd can help you put your online course content in a flow. Our free course-building platform allows you to plan your course in just a few easy steps.

Check our free tool?now and get in touch if you want to know more.?