Module 3 How much course should I put in the course?

Time to Read: about 7.5 minutes

The idea of messy course design from Module 2 is that we design elements of the course when they are relevant to our train of thought and focus. Course design rarely has a clear sequence between starting and finishing, especially when we are the only designer. This may cause our course design to resemble a web of interconnected elements rather than a cleanly plotted road map. This is often natural and is no reason for alarm. However, we do want to point out that our interconnected web can unfortunately cause a loss of purpose for the individual components. This is common for our content. We might sometimes find ourselves dividing the content up into modules without much regard for its purpose. Afterall, it's the content, it needs to go in there.

It is important to consider your course content as more than a lesson plan or items to cover throughout the term. Covering content is no guarantee of learning. We need to dive a bit deeper and think about how the course content contributes to learning outcomes. Identifying how the content helps you teach and how the content helps your students learn is an essential part of course design. Additionally, we need to contemplate how we can best sequence, scaffold, and space content to help our learners succeed.

Content coverage

Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe (2005) have an insightful passage describing coverage in Understanding by Design:

"A second form of aimlessness goes by the name of 'coverage,' an approach in which students march through a textbook, page by page (or teachers through lecture notes) in a valiant attempt to traverse all the factual material within a prescribed time. Coverage is thus like a whirlwind tour of Europe, perfectly summarized by the old movie title If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium, which properly suggests that no overarching goals inform the tour." (p. 16)

It's important to clarify that coverage and overview are not the same. Coverage refers to situations where getting through an amount of content is the purpose of the course. The course covers that content. Getting through content is a task, it is not a learning goal. Unfortunately, coverage can be the reality in our learning environments for factors or influences beyond our control.

In contrast, students do benefit from structured overviews of your discipline. A structured overview extracts the key knowledge and skills that students need to be successful in the program. Structured overviews have learning goals and work best when the knowledge and skills learned in the overview course(s) are recalled and developed throughout the program.

Going from coverage to a structured overview requires some content to be cut (in most cases). We must occasionally pause the factual accumulation and let students practice, be assessed, reflect, and have opportunities to act on our feedback. These take time and time is of very limited supply during the term.

Consuming information is not the most effective way to learn. If your course is heavy on lectures and student readings, consider what your goals for these items are. Hearing and seeing information $LaTeX: \ne$ learning. Where can you lighten your delivery or the course materials consumed by students, and work in student practice, assessment, reflection, and feedback? Each time you do, you will raise retention, understanding, and long-term learning.

Sequencing, scaffolding, and spacing

Sequencing is the ordering of instruction and tasks.
Scaffolding is how instruction and tasks build to achieve an objective.
Spacing refers to the length of time between when knowledge is introduced and when it is reviewed and assessed.
- - For more information on spacing, check out this guide on How to use spaced retrieval practice to boost learning by Retrieval Practice.

These three concepts greatly impact how we learn, remember, and work new items into our existing knowledge. Also, they greatly impact what learning looks like and how it is measured in your course.

Consider the following:

What are the core concepts of the course?
What knowledge of the core concepts do students bring to the course?
What do you expect students to do with the core concepts?
- - For example, do you desire basic understanding or deeper analysis?
  - This question is basically asking for an instructional objective. Use Bloom's Taxonomy for assistance.
    - The writing instructional objectives resource by Dr. Kathy V. Waller in Module 2 references Bloom's Taxonomy.
    - This resource from Vanderbilt University provides a concise overview of Bloom's Taxonomy.
What would a clear sequence of instruction look like for a core concept?
Does your sequence of instruction effectively build (scaffold) to achieve your stated expectation for the concept (the instructional objective)?
How often will you review (spacing)? How can you help students recall previous information to assist them with new concepts?
How will you verify that your assessment accurately represents your sequencing, scaffolding, and spacing efforts?
- - Another way to consider this question is, Are you assessing students beyond what you taught them? Does your assessment match the larger goals you have for student learning, or is the assessment focused on recall of random facts from the pool of information?

Students need help pacing for learning

Online courses tend to have deadlines once a week. And, as teachers, we anticipate students dividing the work throughout the week to move toward completion. However, students tend to be deadline driven. This combination leads to cramming, with online students doing most of their work for the course on one or two days of the week. Cramming over a couple of days, rather than spacing learning, hurts knowledge retention.

If we want our students to learn effectively and retain their learning, it is important to create effective pacing that help students manage their time and encourage regular and frequent engagement with the course.

There are a couple of ways you can create pacing to balance the needs of your learners:

Set frequent deadlines.
Keep deadlines spaced for flexibility but lay out your course with the pace built into the structure - such as listing out work by day in the modules.
Clearly articulate time to complete tasks and encourage students to plan their weeks beforehand.
Provide study strategies for students and outline the study skills they will need to be successful.

Course Workload

Your course is not simply the content you provide. It's also the online sessions, discussions, written exercises, assignments, tests, group work, observations, experiments, feedback, and many other kinds of experiences. These all add to students' weekly workload.

It's easy to underestimate the amount of time it takes students to complete different tasks. As experts, it can be difficult to imagine how much time it would take a novice to read material, complete assignments, or sufficiently study concepts. This inability to view things through a novice's lens is a well-studied phenomenon called the Expert Blind Spot.

To help overcome the difficulty of accurately estimating student workload, we highly recommend:

Using this course workload estimator tool from Wake Forest University.
Adding Time to read and Time to view indicators for all course content.
- - This course uses 180 words per minute.
Creating an assignment with one question, How much time did you spend on this class this week? Gauging the weekly workload for students is especially important after creating or redesigning a course.
- - This question can also provide guidance when shifting from undergraduate to graduate (and vice versa) levels.

Reflective Pause

Pause for a moment and consider the questions mentioned above. Additionally, consider the following questions. Write down your ideas.

What are the expectations for student workload per week for your course? Consider:
- What are your institution's expectations?
- What are your personal expectations for student workload per week in your course?
- What are your students' expectations for student workload per week in course?
- How do these expectations compare?
Which does your course more closely align with: coverage or structured overview?
Do you have time in your course for practice, review, and revision?
- If no, how might you make time?
How have you or how might you incorporate scaffolding, sequencing, and spacing in your course?

References

Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (2005) Understanding by design (Expanded 2nd ed.). Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.