Improve Your Course Using an Online Component: 3 easy methods

05 Aug Improve Your Course Using an Online Component: 3 easy methods

Many of you are enjoying the last few weeks off before the new academic year. Others are beginning to gather materials and prepare for the first week of class. For those who are looking for quick and easy ways to improve their course, consider adding a web-assisted Blackboard component. Web-components allow you to extend your classroom time by providing a place for you to share relevant information and create learning activities that promote deep learning. Listed below are 3 ways to improve your course with an online component:

1. Move your course orientation online – Many of you share your syllabus online, however, you still spend the first day(s) reviewing it along with setting your expectations for students. Instead, write out your expectations or create a short video orientation and post it in your Blackboard component. If your syllabus is the rulebook, the orientation should explain what students should do to be successful given those rules. You’ll avoid having students potentially miss something the first day and provide a resource they can review throughout the semester. You will also free up class time to focus on the course material.
2. Create a questions forum – Students often have the same issues or questions. Instead of answering a dozen emails about an exam, create a forum for course-related questions and ask your students to post their questions on it or answer your students’ emails on the forum. You can also ask your students to participate by answering other students’ questions. It provides another avenue for student-to-student communication and you will save class time and office hour time.
3. Use the journal or blog tool for reflection – Many of you share the desire to have your students reflect upon the topics covered in class or the assigned activities. However, you don’t incorporate them due to a lack of class time. Utilize the journal tool in Blackboard and ask your students questions that will guide them to reflect about what they learned or about the learning process itself. For instance, ask them to answer the following questions:
   • Given your own experiences, do you feel any different about the topic now that you have completed the assignment?
   • What specific academic challenges did you face to complete the assigned activities? Were you able to overcome them or what will you need to do moving forward to overcome them?

To get them to think about how the topic affected them is a great start. If you can also get them think about their process of learning, you are an ace in my book.

The syllabus and orientation can be uploaded to a content area very quickly and the forum, journal, and blog tools are very easy to set up. If you would like more information about how to set these tools up in your Blackboard course or if you would like to provide your students with resources for Blackboard, visit the CETL Blackboard page.  If you are interested in learning more about web-assisted course components, schedule a consultation with the CETL or attend my “Keys to effective web-assisted courses” workshop this semester. We will release the CETL Fall schedule early next week.

Image from Flickr Creative Commons user BryanAlexander. Shared under the permissions of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.