Start things right

Learning online from a student perspective – COFA Online, © University of NSW

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Before commencement…

Organise and plan your engagement – use your calendar and identify the multiple times you will be present online.

Write or record a welcome and orientation message that introduces yourself, how learners should engage with you, with others and with the learning resources.

Create an introductory icebreaker.

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As online facilitators or teachers, we need to plan for and structure our engagement with learners, identify strategies to keep learners on task, motivated and engaged, and be present virtually – often in short bursts. Well-designed online courses can fail if time was not been taken to plan the delivery, the learning journey and learner experience.  When courses fail, feedback from online cohorts can be brutal – much like in on-campus deliveries. Feedback is valuable to designers and educators to inform approaches to design and delivery, meet learner expectations and achieve learning outcomes successfully.

“The tutor was never there….” 

Anonymous online student

These are just some of the things that we often hear when a course fails:

• “The tutor was never there. It took her a week to respond to questions. I can get better value elsewhere. “

• “The facilitator provided little feedback so I had no idea if I knew anything or whether I was on track. “

• “The assessment wasn’t clear. We hardly covered or discussed the content relevant to the task. The management of the team process was also a nightmare. Never again!”

• “I could never find anything. And the communication was really confusing. The site was a mess.”

• “There was little activity in the discussion area, so it was difficult to do anything to help me learn. The tutor’s ‘yes’ and ‘no’ responses were lazy and really not helpful.”

• “This experience was frustrating. We were given a textbook, some readings and nothing else. I need tutorials, discussions or live web sessions to work through this really complex course. “

• “There was a lot of communication but it was disorganised and hard to find because the teacher posted randomly on the discussion board and in announcements, and in emails.  The information was mixed up. It was really  frustrating.”

This section identifies strategies to help you get organised, structure an engaging learning experience, and create an active learner community.  It is by no means exhaustive but it provides you with a few approaches to start your online facilitation in the right way (and help address some of the typical concerns of our online learners).

Before we do this, let’s start with sometimes overlooked things that can be done to help the learning experience get off on the right foot.

Course guide

Make sure the course guide is updated, clear and free of any errors and ambiguities. This document is the contract between RMIT University and its learners. If you are a course coordinator, refer to the Guidelines for Writing Course Guides (pdf) for suggestions on writing one effectively.

Contacts

In the Contacts menu, let learners know who is facilitating, along with the contact details for IT assistance and administration support. Include a photo of yourself, a short bio and any relevant links. Learners want to know who you are and where to go for help.

Learning resources

Make sure all learning materials and links are available and work. Although some online courses are managed and updated by others (internally or externally), there are some that are updated and managed by you or a colleague. Links to websites, videos and other material can break. Check and fix these. Also make sure that you have not messed with the structure – the learning resources have been structured by learning designers or user experience specialists so that they are easy to find, and that navigation is intuitive and logical. Any changes can confuse learners.

Assessment

Assessment details, rubrics, due dates and submission processes need to be spelled-out clearly before commencement. Assessment drives learning and learners want to know up-front what they need to do and how to do it. They may also need learning support – so embed links to support, referencing and resources about plagiarism. Do not only rely on the resources available under a support menu item, which is common in many online courses. Support the learning process by providing these resources where and when needed.