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Before you begin the design of your online content there are some organizational steps worth considering. The order and the way that you present the content to your students will have some effect on their success in your course.

The layout of your course could reflect either, the structure from your course syllabus/outline, the chapters or units in a textbook, or your course schedule. Students generally get a copy of your course outline and or the schedule at the start of the course giving them a picture of what to expect during the course. If your content reflects this structure, they will quickly be able to relate what they see online to what they will be covering in the course.

Choose an organizational approach that will work best for your course. Here are some examples that may assist you to choose.

Here are a few points to consider:

1. When you lay out each topic group consistently, students will be able to expect certain types of information in more or less the same spot in each topic.
2. Using descriptive names for each topic will assist students to know what they are going to get when they click on a link.
3. The key to a well laid our course is consistency. Many students depend on patterns to assist them to find components in your course.

Although the above examples do not cover every possible type of course, plan you course before you begin to add it online.

Making the transition from paper-based content to online content offers many advantages to instructors and students. Other than the cost saving, online access is convenient for both faculty and students. To ensure you maximize the advantage of convenience, the format that you use to provide these documents to your students is an important consideration with respect to ease of use as well as using best practice in teaching.

Providing material online without the benefit of your verbal explanation of its content could do students a disservice. Presentation slides are a good example of this since a properly constructed presentation should contain only your key points. See http://disted.camosun.bc.ca/DE/fac/tutorials/powerpoint.php for more information about why not to post your PowerPoint files online for students. The most compelling reason why instructors put their PowerPoint slides online is that their students asked them to. Generally, students want the slides for the following reasons:

1. They can print them before class to use as a note-taking guide.
2. They can use them as a topical study guide letting them know what points they need to cover.
3. They miss class for a valid reason or they plan to skip class hoping that they will get what they missed from the slides.

In the first and second case, you can save the slides as a PDF with three slides to the page with space for notes on the right. This file will be considerably smaller and makes it clear to the students that not all the information is here, so they need to come to class. If you are concerned that posting your presentation slides either before or after the class will cause students to skip your class, then you may want to consider what value-added activities you can provide in class that would motivate your students to attend your class.

PowerPoint 3 slides per page for note taking

In the third instance, you can plan ahead to make your slide show a comprehensive information package, which would include an audio or video recording of the presentation, or in the very least include your detailed talking notes. This will be a very large file which some students may have trouble downloading. Consider using a better-suited tool to meet the objective. See options for this in the link above.

Poor Presentation Slide with too much information

If you are using presentation software to organize your lesson plan or lecture with all the details that you will cover in class, please do not inflict these wordy presentation slides on students in a lecture. Students can read your slides more quickly than you can speak them (if they can see the small font). As a result, they won’t be listening to you as they read your slides and copy them word for word in their notes. Although students who miss a class will appreciate having you post this detailed material, that is not a good reason to produce a poor quality presentation.

Here are some online resources that discuss creating good PowerPoint presentations:

• http://www.microsoft.com/atwork/skills/presentations.aspx
• http://desktoppub.about.com/od/microsoft/bb/powerpointrules.htm
• http://www.iasted.org/conferences/formatting/presentations-tips.ppt

With so many students using mobile technology such as smart phones, tablet, and notebook computers, downloading large files can be expensive, time consuming, and sometimes not possible due to restrictions on some networks. To improve ease-of-use for your students consider using a variety of file compression techniques to reduce size of files. Here are a few tips:

1. When you convert most files to a PDF format, the file is compressed to a smaller size file. Compare your original file size to the compressed one to make sure it is smaller. Converting to PDF (Portable Document Format) has the added advantage that the file can be read on all computer platforms and requires only a PDF viewer, which is free.
2. Other file types such as .doc or .docx, .xls or xlsx, or other proprietary formats can pose similar problems for students whose computers can’t read a specific file format. It is important to check with your students to make sure the format that you intent to use will work for them. An excellent alternative to PDF is using HTML files.
3. HTML files are quite small, easy to download, and can be kept up to date easily when you need to correct errors or add more information. Students can read HTML files using any computer and most mobile devices. If you are using D2L, making changes to your files requires only that you log on, find the file to edit and save it. There is no requirement to open the file on your computer, make the changes and then upload the file to the server as would be required if you were using .DOC or .PDF file.
4. If you include images in your HTML files also consider the size of the file before you use it on your content. If your image is more than 500K consider making is smaller. Photo editing programs such as Photoshop, Paintshop Pro, Gimp and Picassa will compress your image with just a few clicks. Picassa and GIMP are Open Source programs that you can download to your computer free of charge. If you don’t have admin rights to install the programs on your computer, ask IT support to install it for you.
5. There are also free online services that will let you upload and image, and the compressed file made available for you to download to your computer.
6. Be sure to consider copyright implications of using these services by reading the service’s terms of use.

Being aware of the choices that you make regarding the file types you use will improve learning in your course and make for a better online educational experience.

In-class discussions and online discussions have each their own advantages and disadvantage. The chart below shows a list based on anecdotal evidence and supported by findings by Wang and Woo (2007), http://qywang.pbworks.com/f/Online_F2F.pdf.

Whether you are planning for a face-to-face class or a blended class, it is important to consider a number of questions before you move your discussions online. Just because using an LMS (Learning Management System) such as D2L allows you to have online discussions, doesn’t mean that you necessarily should. Here are some questions:

• What are the issues that you are having with face-2-face discussions?
• Would moving your discussions online solve a particular problem?
• Can the problem be resolved in a different way in the face-to-face environment?
• How receptive will your face-to-face students to using online discussions?

Maybe discussions are not working due to the dynamics of the class or student personalities. Maybe you don’t have enough time to do a good job of a topic. Maybe emotions are getting in the way of having students express themselves honestly. Your experience in your class will give you those insights.

One concern with adding discussion online to a face-to-face class is that it can increase the cognitive load placed on students if you are simply added this activity without removing something else. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_load).

Remember, just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

If you decide that you want to use online discussions, the following websites provide some tips on what to consider when setting up your discussions.

http://www.designingforlearning.info/services/writing/ecoach/tenbest.html

http://www.elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=best_practices&article=59-1

http://www.eto.org.uk/discuss/rules.htm