2 Chapter 2

• Module 2 Overview

Hello and Welcome to Module 2 – Online Course Design. My name is Eric Tenkorang, a UNK Online Learning designer.

Designing an effective online course involves careful planning and consideration to ensure a positive learning experience for your students. In this module, we will cover:

User Experience (UX) – The ease with which students can navigate, find, and interact with materials

Accessibility – Making sure that all students can access the course and its contents from the get-go

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) –Ensuring the course offers various means for students to engage and also showcase their learning.

We will also take a look at

UNK Online Course Templates which was designed to give online courses a consistent look.

UNK Online Standards course and checklist – These resources were designed to provide guidance and also used to review all online courses that go through our grant process.

Stay Tuned!

User Experience Overview

Hello,

In this section, we’ll be addressing User Experience.

Online environments are not as easy to navigate as physical spaces. The slightest ambiguity can throw students off and disrupt student learning. If it’s taking students as much effort figuring out “where to click” instead of engaging with the content in the course, there’s a design flaw!

UX is the field that looks into enhancing the usability, accessibility, and pleasure provided in the interaction between a user and a platform. There are 4 considerations when it comes to User Experience.

Visual design uses aesthetic elements (colors, icons, typography) to communicate an intentional message to users.

Information Architecture considers the best ways to label, structure, and organize content so students can find and use it.

Interaction design plans the path students will take through the environment (or “workflow”) to avoid frustrating or annoying them.

Usability measures how well a product gets its job done overall with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction.

At the end of this section, you should be able to

• Define User Experience and understand its significance in online course design
• Apply the User Experience considerations in your online course design

UDL Overview

Hello,

In this section, we’ll be addressing UDL.

UDL stands for Universal Design for Learning which is a teaching approach to accommodate all learners and eliminate unnecessary barriers to learning.

The online classroom is made up of students from diverse backgrounds with different, cultural backgrounds, and different educational abilities. It’s impossible to meet the individual needs of every student when we design using the one-size-fits-all approach. Universal Design for Learning is grounded in the conviction that we should be designing learning that is accessible to all learners.

UDL advocates for the implementation of effective instructional strategies and multiple forms of engagement, representation, and expression.

This section will cover the three UDL principles and ways that they can be used to promote inclusivity. We’ll discuss

• Multiple means of engagement: Thus providing different opportunities for student involvement
• Multiple Means of Representation: Presenting information and content in various formats to ensure that learners can access and understand the material more effectively.
• Multiple Means of Action & Expression: Providing various ways for individuals to communicate, interact, and demonstrate their understanding.

Upon completion of this module, you should be able to:

Understand the concept of Universal Design and its significance in creating inclusive and accessible learning environments.

Recognize the three principles of Universal Design and their application in course design.

Identify common learning barriers faced by individuals with disabilities in different environments and demonstrate strategies to overcome these barriers through Universal Design.

Accessibility Overview

Hello,

In this section, we’ll be addressing Accessibility in online course design.

Online learning can present unique challenges for individuals with disabilities. As we all know, there is a big push in Education particularly in online classrooms, to create inclusive and equitable learning experiences for our students, and accessibility plays a critical role in that. It ensures that all students, regardless of their abilities or disabilities, can fully participate and succeed in online learning experiences.

Taking a proactive approach towards accessibility ensures that courses are accessible to all students from day one. It is easier to address accessibility concerns as you develop the course than to retrofit. It saves you time, in that when you receive accommodation requests during the semester, you don’t have to go through the course and make major changes.

Creating accessible courses benefits all students in the class not just students with disabilities. Closed captions are beneficial to both a student who is hard of hearing and a student in a noisy environment without headphones. Chunking content and using the right heading styles benefits a student who is visually impaired as well as helps other students with information retention.

Upon completion of this section, you should be able to:

Define accessibility and its significance in creating an inclusive learning environment.

Identify the various barriers faced by individuals with disabilities in accessing digital content.

Identify and apply strategies to create accessible Canvas content.

UNK Online Course Template

In an effort to provide some form of consistency in online courses here at UNK, we have developed an online course template that instructors can import into their course shells and simply add content to it. The template was developed using online course design best practices and includes all the relevant information that online students need to have a great learning experience. The template doubles as a teaching resource. In some of the pre-built pages, you can find ideas on ways to customize them to suit your particular teaching situation.

According to the latest Canvas UNK report, more of our students at some point access online courses through their mobile devices. The template was built using DesignPLUS so it makes it mobile-friendly. Students will be able to access their courses on mobile devices and still enjoy the full learning experience.

At the end of this section, you will be able to:

Understand the benefits of utilizing the UNK Online course template

Import the UNK Online course template into your course

Modify the template and personalize some of its content

Course Development Standards 

The UNK Online Course Development Standards course was developed to provide guidance to instructors when designing and developing online courses. The course is a useful resource for developing new online courses or revising previously developed courses. The course comprises thirty research-based standards broken down into 6 categories. The categories include:

Course Overview & Information

Navigation & Layout

Community & Interaction

Assessment of Learning

Accessibility

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

The structure of the course makes it easy to use. Each standard addresses

• What the standard is about
• Why it’s important or the benefits of implementing it
• And then How to implement the standard by providing you with ideas and resources

In this section, we will also discuss the UNK Online Course Development Checklist. This is a non-evaluative checklist developed based on the standards course and used to review online courses

At the end of this section, you will be able to:

Identify the key elements involved in creating an effective online course

Access and navigate the UNK Online Course Development Standards course

Apply the UNK Online Course Development Checklist to ensure quality assurance and continuous improvement

Syllabus Overview

The syllabus is one of the most important documents in any college-level course but despite its importance, students don’t engage with it the way instructors intended for them to.

This can be very frustrating as an instructor because you have included every piece of information that you think students will find useful in it. Despite your good intentions, students find the way we present our syllabi to be overwhelming. The traditional syllabus is focused on course procedures and policies, Student expectations, teaching methods, and institutional regulations. This ends up making the syllabus look like a legal document. It looks like the terms and conditions of a product or service. As an instructor, you can use your syllabus to directly influence students’ interest in your course.

An engaging syllabus is intentionally designed to welcome and support students. It is visually interesting, written in a supportive tone, and uses multimedia elements to engage students.

It is first and foremost for the student so the contents that students typically look for are front-loaded to give them easy access. It uses images and icons to supplement text, so it is streamlined so as not to overwhelm students.

At the end of this section, you will be able to:

Create an engaging syllabus

Identify the different types of syllabi

Explain the role syllabi play in promoting DEI in the online classroom