Lesson and Content Web Pages

Lesson and Content Web Pages
: "When something can be read without effort,
great effort has gone into its writing."
- Enrique Jardiel Poncela

The greatest challenge when designing a course is developing all the content for the course, and then organizing it so the learners will be able to follow the correct sequence of lessons and learning activities.

image by William Horton, "Designing Web-based Training", p. 13-14

You will find that this design process is very cyclic: you first analyze, design, build, and test, working with your beginning prototype materials.

You then continuously re-analyze, re-design, re-build, and re-test as you fine tune your materials, activities, and online course.

Organize Learning Sequences

For your main project for this class, you will be designing a lesson that will include presentations and activities. One very simplified approach for designing a lesson is to "tell them what you are going to teach, teach, tell them what you taught". Of course, in each step there are specific components and activities to include.

Introduction: overview the topic, goals, or objectives of the lesson; motivate and gain the attention of the learners; include relevant and "real world" resources

Presentation: present the content and procedures
include featured examples
include practice activities and feedback

Summary: review the major ideas presented
test their comprehension of the lesson

There are several file formats for presenting online content and lessons. Each of course, have advantages and limitations. The type of lessons and content you will be presenting in your course will determine what combination of materials will work best. And you may find a combination of formats works best for your course.

If you are converting materials from an existing course to an online course, you will need to evaluate the presentation formats and decide how the information can best be presented.

"A course is just a sequence of learning experiences enabled by a designer and pursued by learners".

~ William Horton
Designing Web-based Training
p. 135

Related Links:

Information is Not Instruction
by Kevin Kruse

Report from the Front: Bad Training Blues
by Kevin Kruse

It's a Learner Centered World
by Karen Mantyla

Getting Started with Online Learning

Guidelines for Writing Content

File Format	Advantages	Limitations
Word files	easy to create and edit easy for students to print out good for templates that students will work with can include graphics good for long lessons with a lot of content easy to upload to the course site	can't view the lesson immediately, must open word to see the lesson requires students to have a copy of Word on their computer to see to lesson when changes are made, must upload again
PDF files	document retains formatting easy for students to print out can be viewed on any computer with Adobe Acrobat reader good for long lessons with a lot of content easy to upload to the course site	can't view the lesson immediately, must open the PDF file to see the lesson requires students to have a copy of Adobe Acrobat reader requires the designer to have an application to create the PDF file difficult to edit when changes are made, must upload again
HTML pages	can be viewed immediately in the course site can include color and links to other resources can use a specialized interface design easy to create and edit good for long lessons with a lot of content easy to upload to the course site	requires HTML programming skills when changes are made, must upload again
PowerPoint presentation	easy to create and edit easy for students to navigate through the presentation includes color and images easy to upload to the course site	difficult to include all the content for a complete lesson not a good format for a "stand alone" lesson when changes are made, must upload again
Links to external sites	can use specialized interface and navigation formats easy to create and edit	students are not working in the Blackboard site must be stored on an external server
Viewlets http://www.qarbon.com	great way to show a procedure for a computer software application easy to create and edit students can review the process many times requires no special plug-ins to view	students are not working in the Blackboard site files must be stored on an external server and linked to from Blackboard requires the Viewlet software to be downloaded to your computer

What do I do after this lesson?

Begin to think about the content you will be presenting, and select a design sequence that will best support your content. Once the sequence is determined, begin to create the presentation components you will include.

Introduction
How will you introduce the lesson? A special banner or header? An introductory paragraph? A question to think about?

Presentation
How will you present the content? What examples and explanations will you include? What interactive activities will support the content? How can you get the audience involved with the material? Will you include a demonstration?

Summary
How will you summarize the content? Include a review section? Include a practice activity? Include a test?

When you begin to create an eLearning course, you must also determine what content will be presented online, and what types of learning activities will support the content.

I've created a worksheet that I would like for each of you to use as a main design template (the link at the bottom of this box will open the template file). On the left of the worksheet identify the topics and subtopics of your lesson. Across from each topic you will select what type of online learning activity you will create to support that specific information.

Begin now to determine the topics and subtopics, arranging them in the order of presentation. As you complete the following lessons, refer to this sheet and decide what types of online learning activities you can create for your content.

eLearning Design Template

due Tuesday, September 23rd