2

Course planning checklist

This checklist highlights prompts to select a suitable course design framework, align assessments with outcomes, develop a suitable blended operationalization with weekly block planning

2.1 COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY FRAMEWORK FOR BLENDED COURSE DESIGN

Creating Teaching Presence

  • Provide clear course learning goals.
  • Share a course overview and welcome message
  • Hold initial face-to-face or synchronous meeting to introduce teacher and course.
  • Ensure instructions for completing course activities and using required technology are clear.
  • Set expectations for student participation and activity in the course.
  • Communicate assignment deadlines and give frequent reminders as deadlines approach.
  • Provide engaging, relevant, and appropriate active learning opportunities.
  • Design assessments that are congruent with learning goals.
  • Communicate expectations for teacher participation (e.g., extent of teacher involvement in class discussions and email response times).
  • Present content in a conversational rather than academic style
  • Offer specific ideas/share expert and scholarly knowledge.
  • Help students correct misconceptions/diagnose understanding.
  • Suggest new resources/ content; inject knowledge from outside resources.
  • Connect ideas (analogies, related topics) and make abstract concepts concrete.
  • Provide personal anecdotes and commentary on teacher’s own efforts to master material.
  • Provide frequent feedback and evaluation guidance (particularly explanatory feedback—expansion of ideas/ different explanation).
  • Present content in effective and focused manner.
  • Raise questions that lead to reflection and cognitive dissonance.
  • Scaffold student understanding as necessary
  • Annotate/comment on assigned scholarly work to personalize and add interest.

Creating Social Presence

  • Provide opportunities for initial introductions and ongoing social interaction.
  • Set agreed-upon, shared norms for operating together in the learning community.
  • Discuss the unique nature of each learning mode and the blending of such.
  • Outline required activities and arrange support for students concerned about role requirements.
  • Be clear about learner choice and flexibility.
  • Provide activities for instructors and students to share experiences and support one another.

Creating Cognitive Presence

  • Facilitation is based on collaboration and discourse; use collaborative learning principles in small group discussion and joint projects.
  • Model and encourage responsiveness and immediacy behaviours in interactions with students.
  • Model and encourage affective expression by sharing experiences and beliefs in discussions.
  • Share the facilitation of discourse by having students summarize discussions.
  • Model and encourage critical questioning, divergent thinking, and multiple perspectives in discussion through provocative, open-ended questions.
  • Model and request practical applications of knowledge and/or formulate and resolve a problem in small group discussions.
  • Encourage and support the progression of inquiry in discussion and small group activities through triggering events, exploration, and integration to resolution.
  • Use development or scaffolding of both content and processes to support behaviours that move discourse through integration to resolution.
  • Use discussion summaries to identify steps in the knowledge creation process.
  • Use discussion material to illuminate course content and encourage students to incorporate content from discussions in their assignments.
  • Use peer review to engage students in a cycle of practical inquiry.
  • Maximize virtual connection and collaboration by including synchronous communications; chat, collaborative whiteboards, interactive video, blogs, wikis, YouTube, etc.

2.2 BLENDED COURSE PLANNING

  • Refer to course outcomes from the official KPU outline
  • Refer to assessment types & values from the official KPU outline
  • Map assessment types with courses outcomes
  • Revisit & identify possible blended operationalizations
  • Comparing operationalizations
  • Considerations in selecting a blended operationalization
  • Planning for learning time
  • Breaking down assessment types, weights for clos around the course schedule
  • Assignment submission timeline planning (dates & times)

2.3 LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM SETUP

  • Collapsed topic format for blended design
  • Weekly topic format for blended design
  • Topic format for blended design
  • One topic format for blended design
  • Tiles format for blended design
  • Revisit & identify possible blended operationalizations
  • The course site is organized to guide and direct students towards course outcomes
  • The course site provided the shortest route for student navigation to relevant activities
  • Direct links are provided to course materials and resources
  • Audio and video material appearing within the course is brief
  • Resource material is accessible to all students in commonly used formats
  • Non-essential materials that may present extraneous cognitive load are avoided
  • A variety of information is used to evaluate the effectiveness of course design
  • The course site has been tested to identify usability problems