Mediated Learning Newsletter

Vol. 6, Issue 3: December 2006, page 1

Developing an Online Course

Melissa Holmes ,
Instructional Design Specialist

John Douglas, Anthropology

John Douglas, Professor and Chair of the Anthropology Department at The University of Montana, has recently developed the online course ANTH 351 Archeology of North America and was willing to discuss the development process with this reporter.

Douglas describes the online course as being about the pre-1492 people from what is now Canada and the United States. The objectives for the course include helping students learn about:

1. a culture different from than their own even though the land area is essentially the same as that from which the students inhabit;
2. the framework of the people who were here before Columbus, beyond being Indians in this very generic sense;
3. major events of the time; and
4. why cultures change as a result of the ancient environment and increased complexity of the surroundings as a results of events.

The course is designed for anthropology majors and students who want to be archeologists. It’s a course required for some federal employees, but Douglas wants to reach others, including educators and Native Americans, who are interested in North American.

Douglas has seen class materials evolve from 35 mm slides to PowerPoint and now to an online format over the 15 years that he has taught it. He and Greg Campbell realized that the course would have a broader appeal than more specialized courses for archeologists. Douglas says, “Many Americans know about history; they’ve taken it in grade school, high school, and college. But, a lot of people just don’t know what happened before there were Europeans here, and I think that’s a void an online course can fill.”

He describes apprehension about developing the online course: how one can get things across to people on a computer, and the use of Blackboard beyond augmenting more traditional on-campus courses. As an online course, Douglas has produced one that is exemplary in terms of aesthetic and instructional design. The content is well “chunked” with very explicit and clear objectives. He describes the stages of development that included:

•Background: Talking to Melissa Holmes (the reporter in her role of helping faculty with Blackboard), looking at some material given to him by her, looking at other online courses, and talking to mostly departmental colleagues and additional fact fi nding where he learned about other people’s experiences and how to deal with problems.

•Planning: Thinking about why he wanted to teach this course, how to design the course from the top down, and what objectives were required were imperative. Additional help in planning (beyond having taught the course) came from a book about pre-Columbian North America suggesting that people are interested and there is a story to be told. Work on planning included deciding how to tell the story. With objectives in place, Douglas says, “It became easier to think of how to chunk it up, how to make it all work.”

•Designing: Choosing to deal with the material both chronologically and geographically was very hard because there are many introductory notes with later moves to geography. Dr. Douglas further describes having to do many drafts of the design of the course.

•Assessing: Going back to the core objectives guided assessment. For example Douglas wanted to give a framework of time and place that students would understand. As a result, one assessment assignment is to create a chart of time and place for the studied area. Additionally, he wanted to give students a feel for the past in a personal way so one of the assignments is to write a piece of fiction placing a character in the prehistoric past. By using a variety of different kinds of assignments, Douglas will evaluate based upon his original objectives.

In terms of aesthetics, Douglas looked at one particular online course he deemed to be appealing and used it as a starting point. He describes thinking of Web design and working with his wife who had a background in this area. He says, “Having somebody who really understood Web design helped a lot. She helped create the overall shell and some of the images that you see in the opening pages. As you go through Units 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 -- she helped design all of that, and then I put the content into each of the areas afterwards.”

Douglas describes doing Google image searches. He says, “Archeology is fundamentally about things and having pictures of things is helpful.” Douglas found colorful images and worked with his wife to develop the course using Dreamweaver. Also he mentions using Macromedia Contribute to modify existing Web pages, Word to create documents that could be exported in Adobe pdf format, free videos from an archaeology web site, and a free slideshow maker in the creation of his own slideshows. He relates, “Most of the tools were very easy to use. I think if I had to learn Dreamweaver [alone] that would have been harder.”

Challenges along the way included rethinking a 15-year old course from a successful format into an online format and wondering whether it could be done. Other challenges were learning how to assess from this new format and spending much time in the process. The assessment challenge will be overcome by using a system of weekly quizzes to make sure students get the material along with fi ve major assignments and three tests. The time challenge in the creation was huge with an estimation of between 100 and 200 hours of personal time and 30 to 40 hours of his wife’s time Douglas gives the following advice for faculty considering developing an online course from scratch: Go into it knowing that it will take a block of time. I would suggest thinking of the course as a whole and what you want to accomplish. Think it through so you don’t have to re-do things. If you’re teaching in a classroom as well, your classroom will benefi t from this exercise. I haven’t delivered the course online yet, but I am teaching in the classroom and I’m clearer with students because I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the course. It’s been one of the best in-theclassroom courses I’ve had, so I’ve actually had some additional benefi t from doing this.