TCC08: Extreme Makeover: Course Edition
This is another liveblogged post from the TCC 2008 conference. The presenter is Robin Bartoletti, Texas Women’s University, Denton, Texas , USA.
She does course redesigns–has done over 80 of them
Goal is to make courses easier to look at and navigate
Mix it up
- More than just text
- Multimedia–you can find things online
- Many instructors rely overly on PowerPoint
Agenda
- Users
- Redesign
- Navigation = curb appeal
- Resources
- Information Basics
- Testing & Evaluation
- Examples
Users
- Who are your users?
- Traditional or nontraditional students?
- Experienced or not?
Redesign Rules
- Get small
- Small steps–don’t need to do everything at once or use every Web 2.0 tool available
- Small chunks–chop content into bite-sized pieces, make it more readable
- Small links–focused research with refined searches, use existing directories instead of creating your own
Navigation
- Includes a “Start here” link in the navigation I think this might be a good thing for us to copy when we switch to the new LMS
- Submenus have instructional goals explicitly visible
- Checklists of content–if you do everything on this list, you have finished this module
Blog has examples of resources, data visualization, favorite tools (most free, some paid)
Information Basics
- This is the “Start here” info
- Syllabus, calendar, course map, policies
- Where to get help
Testing & Evaluation
- Usability testing
- Student satisfaction
- Faculty satisfaction
Tips
- Fun
- Simple
- Small steps
- Conversational–course evaluations are better for courses with a conversational tone
- Interactivity–more than just reading and discussion
- No lecture pages–no big long text
- Online is different
- No “books”–“Don’t put War and Peace online.” They won’t read it.
She gave an example of a course where you could watch 170+ slides, or you could watch the slides while listening to the audio of the instructor reading the 170+ slides. Her choice? Neither! - Check Teaching Naked
- This is all stuff we’re already working on with PLS courses–nice to see that we’re on the right track
Examples
- Visual test with maps–created in WebCT, can be done elsewhere too
- Zip files for Blackboard course available on blog
Read the other liveblogged posts from this conference.
Technorati Tags: interactivity, multimedia, usability, navigation, coursedesign, tcc08
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