Content for Online Courses
"Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight. "
Which Medium is Best?
The best way to communicate information depends on what you are communicating and why.
According to the folks at Unext.com, Jakob Nielsen and Donald Norman: http://www.jnd.org/index.html (opens in new window)
"We believe that education comes first, technology second. We exploit the power of each specific medium: Books, lectures, videos, the Internet, and the computer.
Books: Still the best presentation medium.
Lectures and Videos of Lectures: Best for motivation and engagement, not for teaching.
The Internet: A powerful tool for knowledge management, for social interaction, and for current events.
The Computer: A powerful tool for simulation, allowing learners to explore the concepts they are learning and to try them out to see their impact."
In Learning Domains and Delivery of Instruction Cindy Vinson, Ed.D. provides in-depth information about how to select the appropriate medium.
Online Media
Many teachers and instructional designers are using books and videos as the delivery medium of whatever "content" is communicated and simply use the "Instruction" to communicate with student about how to carry out the assignment and perhaps make notes on how to interpret the print material, online sources, or video tapes.Developing all the content for an online course (like this one) is equivalent to writing a book. Unless you’ve already written the textbook for your course, the most practical approach is to create a course for which students use other media (books, Web sites, videos, interactive CD-ROMs) to get background information. Then you, as the teacher, can concentrate on developing meaningful assignments to help students contextualize, reflect, and build on what they learned via other media.
There are basically three ways to deliver the course content or Instructor’s Notes:
- Majority of the content is online.
- Majority of the content is via other media, such as books, video,
or audio (online components are reserved to facilitate collaborative
work and online discussion).
- Teachers offer content online to provide context, in addition to introducing material presented in other media, such as books and videos.
The Web then becomes not the online lecture hall, but rather the communication medium for giving and posting assignments and class discussion.
Topic 4 |
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Content
for Online Courses