Northeastern University
Blackboard Online Course Design
Designing a course for the online environment can be a daunting task, particularly if you
do not have experience with internet-based education. The purpose of this document is to
provide a framework for conceptualizing online course design, using Blackboard, at
Northeastern University. Your own courses may not be laid out exactly as this document
suggests, and that is fine. The idea is for you to have a place to begin, and a basis on
which to build, when jumping into the course design process.
So, without further ado, here are five steps to consider when creating your online course.
1. Define learning objectives for your course. This is a crucial step in the
course design process. It is important to know and understand your learning
objectives, or “teaching points,” well enough that you are able to list them concisely
and completely. When you have compiled your list, you will have what amounts to a
document of requirements. Students completing your course successfully will have
obtained all knowledge and skills listed therein. Perhaps you’re developing an online
version of a pre-existing classroom course, one that already has a set of learning
objectives. In that case, take a look at those teaching points and make sure that they
seem complete, and that they ring true with your own viewpoint and experience.
a) Important questions to ask yourself:
i) What do you want your students to understand upon successful completion of
your course?
ii) What tasks do you want your students to be able to accomplish upon
successful completion of your course?
(1) Each appropriate answer to these two questions is a learning objective.
b) Learning Objectives/Teaching Points Layout:
Learning objectives are best arranged in outline form, grouped by lesson topic or
subject. Each outline entry is a sentence that begins, “The student will
understand…” or, “The student will be able to…” Qualifying information may be
entered under any necessary teaching points, according to outline style. Once this
document is completed, it will serve as a goals reminder for the entire course
development process.
2) Categorize your learning objectives. Although you probably have your
teaching points categorized (at least in your mind) by topic or subject, you now need
to begin arranging them according to how they will best be taught.
a) Important questions to ask yourself:
i) In the classroom, which points would you bring out during a lecture?
ii) Which points would you illustrate by asking questions in class?
iii) Which points are covered especially well by the textbook or supplementary
reading materials?
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Northeastern University Online (NUOL)
iv) Which points would best be demonstrated using a “learning by doing”
approach?
3) Plan your weekly lessons. Now that you’ve made preliminary decisions as to
how each aspect of your course material will best be delivered, you can build your
weekly lessons or modules.
a) Lecture – Content you have categorized as “lecture” is lesson material that you
may choose to put straight into your weekly folder modules. This is your way of
speaking directly to your students, a la classroom lecture. This may include
straight text, graphics, or documents, using Blackboard’s Items and Learning
Units.
b) Classroom Questions – Think about putting the best of these discussion
questions into your Discussion Board, grouped by module or week. You’ll want
all of these to be healthy, “meaty” questions, designed to stimulate interesting,
thoughtful discussion and debate. Keep in mind that you’ll be able to enter the
discussion periodically, steering it as you see fit, to best illustrate your teaching
points.
c) Text – What do you want your students to read from the textbook? At what
point? Will students read from the text first, then read your lecture, then
participate in the discussion? Or should the text come second, as reinforcement to
your lecture material? Is there some other way you’d like things to happen? The
choices are yours, and it’s important that you have answers in mind to these
questions as you’re designing your course.
d) Tasks – What tasks do you want your students to perform? How will you verify
that they have completed them? How will their performance be evaluated? Will
their performance be evaluated in all cases? Is prior programming (e.g.,
developing an interactive Web site) required in order for the course to work? If
so, are the resources present to accomplish it?
e) Other important points to consider:
i) Will the material in each lesson folder correspond strictly to time?
(1) corresponding each folder to a particular week is preferable in the majority
of cases
ii) Will all modules be visible to users at any time, or is there a compelling
reason for withholding some lessons until specific points within the course are
reached?
(1) While Blackboard allows you to date-restrict folders or individual items,
so that they are only displayed when you want them displayed, this should
be used only for specific reasons. It’s generally preferable to have all
lessons laid out from the beginning, so students may work ahead if they
wish. The Discussion Board is an appropriate tool for pacing your
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Northeastern University Online (NUOL)
students, so that they don’t try to do all of the work at once and then take a
vacation for the rest of the quarter. (See “Discussion Board” section
below).
4) Create your lessons. You probably won’t want to build your lessons in
Blackboard at this point. That step should come at the end of the course development
process, after you know exactly what you want to do. If you have your lessons
planned out before you begin the Blackboard work, you’ll most likely save yourself
the effort of making changes later. While it’s very simple to place content inside your
Blackboard course, the going gets more tedious if you decide you wish to move
material around and re-structure your lessons.
a) The content of your course will dictate, to a certain extent, how you will manage
your folders, but here is a general template to start with:
Your folder titles should look something like this:
Lesson 1: Lesson 1 Topic Covered
(dates of Week 1)
Lesson Description, if appropriate
Inside each folder, here’s an example of how you might wish to organize your
items:
What we’ll cover this week: It is very helpful for you to lay out a concise,
bulleted list of the topics to be covered in each lesson. This gives students a sense
of where they’re going, which makes the assignment more accessible from the
outset.
Reading Assignment: Most likely, each week’s material will contain a reading
assignment. It’s up to you to decide whether you wish for the reading to come
before or after your own lesson material.
Lesson Notes: This is your chance to “talk” directly to your students about the
lesson material, sharing your own viewpoints, experiences, ideas, stories, etc.
Lesson notes often resemble a visual representation of a lecture. You may wish to
include diagrams, audio clips, PowerPoint slides, or anything else that will
enhance the experience. If your lesson notes are especially lengthy, you may feel
more comfortable placing them inside their own folder, uploading them to BB as
a Web page and linking to that page, or attaching them in a Microsoft Word
document.
Discussion Questions: Here’s a good place to present the week’s Discussion
Board material, along with any expectations you have regarding their posts for
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Northeastern University Online (NUOL)
this particular question.
What’s in Store: At this point, it's great to sum up what's been covered, while
pointing toward what's coming next. You can recap the major points of the week's
lesson, then explain how those points will be applied to the following week's
material.
b) Consistency is always a positive thing, wherever it’s possible. If it makes sense,
from the standpoint of the content, to keep a consistent format for each week’s
lesson material, that’s terrific. However, consistency at the expense of logical
presentation of course content is never good. If your course content organizes
itself more appropriately in a different way for a particular week, that’s fine.
c) You may not wish to follow this outline exactly, but it’s good to have it in mind
as a framework. That way, you’ll know why you’re making the decis ions you’re
making regarding course development and design.
5) Design your Discussion Board. Your Discussion Board is a crucial element of
your course. Our prime “enemy” in an online learning experience is the isolation that
participants feel as a direct result of the learning situation. Because there is no
classroom experience, students and faculty tend to feel cut off from each other. The
Discussion Board is the single most effective way to counteract that feeling. A
healthy discussion encourages a sense of community. It also involves students with
the content of the course in a healthy, engaging way. In addition, it is superior in
some ways to classroom discussion because it allows students the opportunity to
reflect and consider before putting their answers forth.
a) Questions to consider:
i) What questions do you want to use in your discussion?
ii) What is going to be required of students?
(1) It is strongly recommended that you include the Discussion Board in a
“Participation” portion of students’ grades.
(2) A common and effective requirement is for students to post, for each
discussion question, a response of their own and a reply to someone else’s
post. These responses must be substantive. The more clearly you can
explain your expectations regarding the Discussion Board (or any other
aspect of the course), the better.
iii) What “style” discussion will you be looking for? How formal should the
writing be? Is there a specific format you want students to follow when
posting to the Discussion Board?
iv) How long should posts be? One paragraph? Two?
(1) It’s important not to allow DB posts to become too lengthy. This makes it
difficult to read and respond to them concisely. If students need to be
posting more than a page of text to the Discussion Board, it is
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recommended that they attach the text to the DB post as a Word
document.
v) How many posts are required of students per week? Per lesson/module?
vi) How many questions will there be per week? One complex question? Three
simpler questions? Will it vary from week to week?
vii) How is the DB best used to teach the content of your course?
(1) In some cases, such as with computer programming courses, it’s more
appropriate to use the DB as a forum for students to post problems and
issues they’ve encountered. They may then respond to each other’s posts
and help each other out. You may also participate as necessary.
viii) Will all discussion forums be available from the start of the course, or will
you develop them as you go along?
(1) This is similar to the decision of whether or not to make all of your
content folders visible at the outset of the course. Again, it’s your call.
(2) Some instructors like to keep certain discussion topics open only for a
certain amount of time. For example, the discussion forum for a certain
week may stay open only during that particular week. After that, the
forum may be “locked,” so that no further posts may be introduced. That
way, students may continue to read what’s there but they may not post
additional comments.
6) Build your course in Blackboard. This sho uld always be the final step in the
process. It’s very tempting to build your course in Blackboard as it’s being created,
but in the long run, you’re much better off if you’ve finished planning first.
a) While building your course, check your “student’s-eye view” frequently. You
accomplish this by clicking on the Course ID link on the top right corner of your
browser window. If you make it a habit to view the course itself on a regular
basis (as opposed to viewing your content within the modification tool), you’ll be
comfortable in the knowledge that your course appears and behaves in the way
you’ve envisioned.
b) Proofread your course content! This is very important. The primary method of
communication with an online course is the written (or typed) word. Misspelled
words, improper grammar, or problems with formatting of documents will not sit
well with students.
c) Don’t ever use the “Display Until” date-restriction function, unless it’s required
(e.g., for a quiz that can’t be available after a certain day). Also, if you deem it
appropriate to date-restrict your content so students can’t see it until a certain
time, please place a date restriction on the entire folder, as opposed to the
individual items of content inside the folder.
d) You may wish to consider using an HTML editing application, such as
Dreamweaver or Frontpage, to design your course content. Once you have it
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Northeastern University Online (NUOL)
formatted as you’d like, you can take the generated HTML code and paste it
straight into the content window of Blackboard. This can be quicker and easier
than hand-coding your page formatting while working in Blackboard. When you
use this approach, make sure you click the “HTML” radio button underneath the
content text box.
Conclusion
Online course design can be a very rewarding experience. It’s a terrific feeling to put
everything together at the end of the process, and then see the finished product. It’s even
better once you see students participating in your course.
It’s often helpful to bounce ideas of other people while structuring a course – someone
who’s not quite as close to the content may offer a different, useful perspective. An
instructional designer will be able not only to answer your questions, but to help you
conceptualize the structure and design of your online course.
Have fun!
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Northeastern University Online (NUOL)