Roundtable:
Designing Online Content
Session 1 Notes
Guest Expert: Barbara Patterson
What would you like to talk about in regards to Designing Online Content?
 Learning Objects
 Video Conferencing in Online Course
 Learn more about how publishing can move media away from books and into
online learning realm
 We need to find the problems facing traditional schools and classrooms and
develop online courses based on those needs.
Q: Does anyone have training as an instructional design?- One woman was working
on her degree in Instructional Design and explained the broad definition.
 Issues in Virtual VIA- Content reviewers- instructional design are the make it
pretty people rather than content experts
 no universal definition of an instructional designer.
 Designer as a course developer- assessing the needs of the teachers or students
and then setting up the goals of the units.
 SCAD- Savannah College of Art and Design might give insight into the definition
of instructional designer
 Instructional design definition changes with time
Q: About how much time should be invested in designing an online course and at
what pace?
 About a year to year and a half turn-around for Virtual VA course and then they
go out for testing.
 For ETLO courses- anywhere from 6 months to a year depending on the amount
of time allotted to devoting to course development and how many people are
working on it.
 Still should consider that courses always under revision always modifications to
make.
 Curriculum people doing content and a team with IT people putting into online
environment.
 Recommend getting content experts to review the content and test with users
before releasing courses to the public.
 VA Virginia developed a Style Guide for courses and info for how they design
their courses and a Content Development Manual
ETLO/SREB/ISTE Online Learning Institute
http://edtechleaders.org/forms/conf2007/oli07_archives.asp
July 2007
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Outside experts to evaluate when they were done.
SREB Website has an electronic classroom initiative- document set up for
evaluating an online course.
(Quality Matters) http://www.qualitymatters.org/
Online Course Design Challenges
 Community College funding formula is different – little technical staff,
accustomed to doing more with less but still needs accreditation and what SREB
can offer to educators.
 Collaborative efforts can be problematic when they don’t come up with the same
conclusions.
Q: Is there a consensus about what needs to be included in an online course?
 There is an organization- NACOL (http://www.nacol.org/) organization that has
committees set up to have standards for design, evaluation and assessment.
 Everyone is excited but you need to filter it down. Some states setting really high
standards but need to make sure that everyone can reach the standards that we are
setting.
 Michigan had success in requiring online learning.
Learning Object Repositories Not enough resources out there or research about how people are defining them
and how teachers are using them.
Q: What does that mean on the user end? What are best practices about using
learning objects in your content?
 Content needs to be flexible so they can use parts.
 Terc- gave some of content to fit in online courses.
Q: Trying to define learning object- what is the smallest piece that can be called
a learning object?
 Taking a course and dividing into pieces that can be pulled out and used in
different scenarios. Learning objects give you more flexibility because they
can assemble into different places.
 Other people consider learning objects like modules- and those modules can
go.
 Organizations trying to take their courses and pulling out pieces that they call
learning objects so that pieces of content can go into different places.
 SC shared conversations with vendors producing content- they want it produced
in modules- Vendors are beginning to have conversations so they can package
their content to work in different CMS.
 Vendors- don’t’ want user fees, agency account, state agency license, make it
portable)
 Shared experiences with developing Learning Objects from the ground up- as
they go- developing style guides for consistency.
 Technical aspects of interactive ability- what is our metadata, planning to build
PD with teachers along with students to work with the same content.
ETLO/SREB/ISTE Online Learning Institute
http://edtechleaders.org/forms/conf2007/oli07_archives.asp
July 2007
Session 2 Notes
Guest Expert: Gary Lopez
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Gary Lopez shared his bio- Monterary Institute- (Previously with Archipelago)
Also produces Cousteau’s Ocean Adventures
NROC- repository of online courses- something that other people can use, invest
in multimedia and build them out and improve them so that they can be
distributed.
academic institutions join the membership and they can also build their own
content.
15- 18 of State DOE have joined
Currently a limited amount of content available in NROC repository
NROC is a non-profit so instructors can students can use it for free- Institutions
can join for a membership fee. Range from $3000- $12,000.
Questions?
 How do other districts do teaming to create courses? Team up with designers and
teachers to design new courses or refresh old courses
 Is there research to so that online courses increase student achievement
 How have people been working with instructional designers to enhance content
with multimedia
What resources are available to build courses?
 Not dissimilar from writing a text book- a lot of work. Now there are a lot of
tools at your disposal but you also need the resources of a lot of different people.
 Goals: hold attention of students, meet standards, prof. presentation, have a
blueprint that will give flexibility that can be used in different CMS systems.
 Typically- a course that meets all of those standards will cost a lot of money and
time.
 NROC- starts with investments made by others- $3000-$5000 dollars to maintain.
 A good starting place for creating a course is to get content from somewhere else
 G. Lopez said the following elements are necessary to create online courses:
Project manager, graphic artist, engineer, educational design specialist.
 Many other people shared how they were able to create good courses without that
team though.
 Content specialist- focused on the content of the course and got the content in and
then took it through experts to give feedback and get other people to look at it.
 Have testers of the course. If people are invested, they will give the help and
feedback for free.
 Discussed how a Wiki approach is a good way for teams to collaborate on course
design.
 Not just the initial investment- need to continue to work with it as time goes on.
ETLO/SREB/ISTE Online Learning Institute
http://edtechleaders.org/forms/conf2007/oli07_archives.asp
July 2007
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NROC spends about $10,000 per course to keep up with it.
EdTechLeaders Online http://www.edtechleaders.org/ 10 week course where
participants are learning how to write courses while actually writing it. At the
end, other stakeholders usually review.
Shared Resources:
 Professional Learning Board
(http://www.professionallearningboard.com/lms/) that are dedicated to
building and reviewing PD course content.
 MERLOT- http://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm free content pieces
available that you can get pieces of info to try and build something else. Also
good searchable resource for online links.
 SREB- status of online repository. Discussed SCORE
http://www.sreb.org/programs/edtech/SCORE/index.asp
SCORE Initiative- SREB trying to build a common object repository. Tries to
keep from reinventing the wheel.
 Credit recovery, remediation, credit- build on itself- can individually assess
and use objects to fill those holes. Merlot you can find objects to fill in.
 WINK (http://www.debugmode.com/wink/ )and SEE MONKEY(?) for
creating online content that captures video of clicking and how to teach people
the technology.
 Captivate 2 (http://www.adobe.com/products/captivate/?sdid=ZHBP) will let
you compress PPT
 Hippocampus- http://www.hippocampus.org/index.html “HippoCampus is a
project of the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education (MITE). The
goal of HippoCampus is to provide high-quality, multimedia content on
general education subjects to high school and college students free of
chargee”
What are essential components of an online module?
 Student modules should be smaller than teacher modules
 5-8 minutes of material so teachers can move around for students
 Consider building the content in a way that is flexible to move. (HTML or
FLASH)
 Using the Backward Design format- focus on the learning goals and see what is
out there.
 Look at the resources and see what is already out there to help you meet the
learning goals.
Session 3 Notes
Guest Expert: Barbara Patterson
Questions raised were:
ETLO/SREB/ISTE Online Learning Institute
http://edtechleaders.org/forms/conf2007/oli07_archives.asp
July 2007
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What are the different models for online learning?
What types of PD should be made available to help teachers design content?
What are the challenges in supporting the technology?
What are some appropriate tools for online courses?
How do we get people to stay for the duration of the online course? How do hook
them in?
How can we align the courses to the state’s standards?
How come there is no shared repository of knowledge about designing online
courses that different states can use so as not to re-invent the wheel each time?
Discussion focused on:
 the different management systems (ex. Blackboard, D2L, Moodle).
 how to integrate interactivity into the courses (ex. use of Flash).
 creating just on-time online tutorials (ex. creating Word Documents that function
like a Help desk).
 the need for surveys in order to understand what teachers want from the online
courses.
 requiring instructors to give face-to-face sessions and making it optional for
participants in order minimize the participants’ learning curve.
ETLO/SREB/ISTE Online Learning Institute
http://edtechleaders.org/forms/conf2007/oli07_archives.asp
July 2007