A Few More Common Mistakes to Avoid in Online Course Design and Development

As a follow up to my post 5 Common Mistakes to Avoid in Online Course Design and

Development, there are few more mistakes with suggestions that I wanted to share with you. 

1. Mistake #6: Responding to student email 24/7. We often hear the phrase "anytime, anywhere learning" when we read or discuss online learning with our colleagues. For many learners "anytime, anywhere" means just that. Learning and engaging in course activities can occur at 2 p.m in the afternoon or at 2 a.m. in the morning. Additionally, the instructor may be in Texas, but students may be in New York, Orlando, India, China, Spain, Nebraska, West Virginia and so on.  Many students in online courses will email instructors with questions regarding their grades, an assignment, the syllabus, etc. and expect an immediate (or very quick) response from the instructor.  The reality: instructors have lives and other obligations outside teaching their online class(es).  Instructors are not on their computers or smartphones 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  With easy access to mobile technologies that surround us 24/7, we, as instructors, frequently find ourselves responding to student emails at home during family time, while running important personal/family errands, and so on.  This mistake can be easily avoided in several ways.
   
   My suggestion:  Clearly state, at least in your syllabus, a reasonable response time that you will respond to students' email inquiries.  In my experience, I usually state that "I will respond to messages within 48 hours" so that I give myself ample time to respond and maintain my family obligations outside of the online class.  The key here is that students know this ahead of time right at the top of the semester or term.  A two-day windows allows you to (1) better manage and set your own time that you can dedicate to responding to email messages and (2) typically communicates to the student that you may respond at any time within this reasonable time frame (i.e. in 10 min., an hour, in one day, etc. that you respond to a student email).  Some instructors prefer a 24 hour response time.  Whatever time frame you specify, be sure to uphold that expectation to the best of your ability.  Communications, including responding to student emails, can easily make or break an online learning experience for students.
   
2. Mistake #7: Falling into the "if I tell them, they will learn" trap.  When I first starting teaching face-to-face in higher education in 2001, preparing my presentations was easy.  My goal was to cram as much information about a specific topic and simply communicate this information through a 50 minute or hour and a half lecture.  This was instinct for me as a new instructor because I was taught this way throughout undergraduate studies.  I was initially convinced that whatever I would tell my students they would incorporate into their own learning.  However, over time, I found myself frequently thinking "I just covered this in class" to student questions I received via email or was asked in person.  This was my red flag.  It took time and teaching experience to understand that students need to be engaged with content in order to develop understanding, knowledge, and skills.  Telling students information does not equate to learning (this is the Industrial Age mentality to learning).  A key element to the process of building understanding is for students to have opportunities to apply what has been learned. 
   
   My suggestion:  One idea is to take a project-based learning (not the same as simply completing a "project" for class) approach.  Create a small group project in which students have to create an end-product (i.e. a video, developed blog, or any multimedia presentation) that aims at addressing an authentic problem or question.  In other words, design a project that is centered around a real-world question (a higher-order thinking question) that doesn't simply have an answer or solution in a text book.  Another idea is to use formative assessment strategies such as peer instruction, "mudiest point," think-pair-share, etc. to get students more engaged with the content.  Whichever strategy/method you choose to use, just be sure that you provides students with an opportunity to ask questions and answer them. 
   
3. Mistake #8: Ignoring the instructional role of a facilitator.  This mistake is closely related to Mistake #6 listed above.  Historically in any learning environment, content has been been delivered through the lecture format with the instructor standing in front of a group of students.  Essentially, the instructor would read their notes or PowerPoint slides and students would write in their notebooks.  Every proceeding lecture would continue with this format and we, as instructors, thought that we had no reason to think this instructional experience can be any different even if we had the desire to change this delivery method. 
   
   Teaching online, however, is not the same as teaching in the face-to-face learning environment.  In an online course, we no longer have to deliver three hours of a live lecture every week or read from out notes and look up to see if students are writing everything down our every word on paper.  Online, instructors are no longer the only source of course content.  In a more facilitative role, the instructor can make the content available online (i.e. short videos, text and article readings, narrated PowerPoints), but time doesn't have to necessarily be taken to talk or regurgitate this content to students in any given point of time.  Instead, we hold students responsible for becoming acquainted with the content through various media, create learning experiences to apply concepts/skills from the content, and be prepared to answer questions.  When students are engaged in applied learning activities, the faclitator (you the instructor) become more of a guide to ensure student stay on track to achieving a desired instructional outcome.
   
   My suggestion:  Create learning activities that require students to think, synthesize, evaluate (higher-order of Boom's Taxonomy) content they were exposed to in order to formulate a solution or response to a question.  In other words, create a learning experience that doesn't simply have "one right answer."  So during this learning experience, you observe/assess the process students go through to formulate a solution and pose questions along the way if the student is beginning to go off track.  Once a solution has been formulated, have that student or group present their findings to the rest of the class.  This is definitely a paradigm shift to what instructors may be accustomed to for content deliver.  

More ideas in this area of online course design and develop are still to come.  In the meantime, feel free to share your thoughts and experiences in the comments sections below.