Designing Online Courses
Designing an online course is going to be a challenging experience for me since I don't consider myself to be the most creative person, but I am determined to finish my "Quest to Online Teaching." I have two ideas on the type of course I would like to design and I am not sure how I to decide which one I will focus my time designing.
Idea #1
I am an Office Manager in the Admission Office at Governors State University and I supervise the student workers who work as office assistants in our office. Since student worker positions have a low retention rate because of graduation, students not returning to school, and student's wanting experience in other fields, I find myself constantly training new employees. My first idea is to design an online class in which I could train new student workers. Some of the things I would teach in my course would be customer service skills, admissions requirements, and documents required for admission to different programs. Since this is something that I haven't seen done before, I know that it will be a challenge.
Idea #2
In my current position I often see students come in after they complete their undergrad and scramble to find a graduate major to apply to. I would like to eliminate the confusion for students when applying for graduate programs. My target audience would be undergraduate students in their junior or senior year who are interested in pursuing a master's degree in any field. This is because most graduate programs have prerequisite course work needed in order to be admitted. This will allow the student to take these prerequisite courses while still in their undergraduate program. Some of the things I would teach are admission requirements, differences in graduate majors, the importance of an undergraduate GPA, and special exams, such as GRE and MAT. I have also not seen this as an online class so again, it will be a challenge for me to create this course online.
Design Plan
I will need to develop a design plan no matter which idea I decide to develop. Some things I will need to consider are:
- Course description
- Course learning objective
- Lessons
- Types of Assessments
- Final Projects
- Grading Rubric
I want to encourage student to student interaction because I don't want my students to feel like they are alone in the class. I want the students in the class to be able to learn from each other through our discussion boards and class projects. Another important aspect for me is to develop student to instructor interaction. I am hoping to develop this by providing accurate feedback to the students while also developing a challenging curriculum that will motivate the students to work hard.
Conclusion
I am looking forward to design my first online class. Hopefully I will receive feedback from my peers which will allow me to decide which online class I should design. If not, I will need to dig even deeper inside my mind to figure out which design idea is right for me.
