Plan Content

Planning your course gains special importance in a remote or online environment where adjustments to structure, content, and instructions can be challenging to make due to the asynchronous nature of the medium. This can be alleviated by carefully planning how you will introduce and reinforce your content and associated learning outcomes.

• Use constructive alignment to ensure all course elements fit together
• Use a pedagogical model to frame your course

Tools

• Use the Teaching Commons’ Course Conversion Plan Template for moving from in-class to remote delivery
• Use the Teaching Commons’ Online Course Plan Template for designing a course from scratch

Resources

• Constructive Alignment (Teaching Commons)
• Bloom’s taxonomy handout created by BCIT (downloadable handout)
• Video about Bloom’s taxonomy created by Ontario universities
• Use this interactive tool to generate learning outcomes
• Read more about Fink’s integrated course design model (downloadable handout)
• Tips for course design that increases access (downloadable PDF)
• Look at our comprehensive YorkU Guide for Remote Teaching for more on constructive alignment

Best practices

• Constructive alignment is an iterative process. While learning outcomes may be the start of course planning, they will likely need to be revisited once teaching and learning activities and associated assessments have been determined.

Tools

• Explore Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction
• Explore Merrill’s First Principles of Instruction
• Familiarize yourself with universal design principles: UDL Graphic Organizer  and Universal Design for Learning Guidelines

Resources

• Teaching Commons Webinar: Connect, React, Repeat (Dr. Linda Carozza)
• Teaching Commons Webinar: What to expect when you’re expected (to now teach online) Part 1 and Part 2 (Dr. Steve Gennaro)
• Steps to Take When Designing an Online Course

Best practices

• Universal design for learning helps maximizing our effort to remove all physical and cognitive barriers to learning, thereby ensuring every student, regardless of individual circumstances, gets an equitable opportunity to participate in the learning experience and achieve the intended learning outcomes. For this reason, it can be a framework used as the backbone of any course design or pedagogical model selected.
• The Community of Inquiry Framework is useful when aiming to create a socially-constructed learning experience through the development of three interdependent lenses – social, cognitive and teaching presence.