1. Best Practices in Course Development and Instructional Design Jonan Donaldson August 23, 2012

2. Overview “One must learn by doing the thing, for though you think you know it, you have no certainty until you try. We learn by doing.” - Aristotle

3. Principle: Sense of Community “An impressive collection of studies has shown that participation in well-functioning cooperative groups leads students to feel more positive about themselves, about each other, and about the subject they're studying. Students also learn more effectively on a variety of measures” – Alfie Kohn

4. Principle: Sense of Community Student-Teacher Interaction

5. Principle: Sense of Community Student-Student Interaction

6. Principle: Sense of Community Prompt feedback

7. Principle: Begin with the End in Mind “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” – Stephen Covey

8. Principle: Begin with the End in Mind Course-level Learning Outcomes

9. Principle: Begin with the End in Mind Unit-level Objectives

10. Principle: Multiple Pathways of Learning “The brain has evolved over millions of years to be responsive to different kinds of content in the world. Language content, musical content, spatial content, numerical content, etc.” – Howard Gardner

11. Principle: Multiple Pathways of Learning Text, Graphics, Audio, and Video

12. Principle: Engage Students at Higher-order Thinking “The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.” – Mark Van Doren

13. Principle: Engage Students at Higher-order Thinking Blooms Taxonomy

14. Principle: Authentic Assessment “The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think” – John Dewey “The principal goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done.” – Jean Piaget

15. Principle: Authentic Assessment Variety of Assessment Methods

16. Principle: Authentic Assessment Minimize High-stakes Assessments

17. Principle: Authentic Assessment Alternatives to Tests

18. Principle: Authentic Assessment Use Rubrics Whenever Possible

19. Principle: Authentic Assessment Regularity of Due Dates

20. Principle: Clarity of Process “Organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up.” – A. A. Milne

21. Principle: Clarity of Process Navigation

22. Principle: Clarity of Process Routine/Organization

23. Principle: Clarity of Process Weekly Overviews

24. Principle: Student Autonomy “A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary.” – Thomas Carruthers

25. Principle: Student Autonomy Individualization in Activities

26. Principle: Student Autonomy Multiple options for Activities and Assessments

27. Principle: Student Autonomy Self- and Peer-grading

28. Principle: Online Presentation Design Principles “Design is about choices and intentions, it is not accidental. Design is about process. The end user will usually not notice ‘the design of it.’ It may seem like it just works, assuming they think about it at all, but this ease-of-use (or ease-of-understanding) is not by accident, it’s a result of your careful choices and decisions.” – Garr Reynolds

29. Principle: Online Presentation Design Principles If it can be embedded, it should be embedded.

30. Principle: Online Presentation Design Principles Order of power: Video-Image-Audio-Text

31. Principle: Online Presentation Design Principles Content Blocking

32. Principle: Online Presentation Design Principles Contrast

33. Principle: Online Presentation Design Principles Fonts Design professionals such as Robin Williams and Garr Reynolds argue that any design should contain no more than two fonts. Furthermore, those fonts should be of contrasting type. For example, if your primary font is a serif font (has those little hats and feet), your secondary font should be a sans serif font (without those little hats and feet). Using an Ariel font with a Calibri front causes discomfort for the reader because both are sans serif fonts. The same is true if you use a Times New Roman font with a Book Antiqua font because both are serif fonts.

34. Principle: Online Presentation Design Principles Alignment

35. Principle: Online Presentation Design Principles Color

36. Conclusion “It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.” – Albert Einstein

37. Best Practices in Course Development and Instructional Design Jonan Donaldson