Maybe you want to save this one for another time, after you’ve had time to decompress. Or maybe your coping method is to head into your Spring 2022 course planning. Whatever the case, this post represents a wrap of 2021 for me, friends. Thanks for spending part of it with me. In the words of one of my favorite-favorites, Mariame Kaba, may 2022 bring us more justice and some peace.
I’ll wrap 2021 with one final practical post because while I hope we will all take a well-deserved break, I know that we’ll also likely spend time thinking about Spring 2022 in the next month because that’s just who we are.
I submitted a proposal to present at a round-robin professional development event at my home institution for January 2022, and having pulled together the slides already (even without an acceptance because I am just that kind of nerd now accepted!), I’ll share details of my incredibly unsexy topic: Course organization1.
I’m sharing because I’ve come to view my approach as a reflection to my commitment to a pedagogy of care. I don’t know if everyone views the nuts and bolts of organization through this lens, so I thought I would write about it as we start thinking about Spring 2022.
This information is probably very obvious to people who have been teaching online asynch for awhile. But in light of the number of students I’ve helped figure out how to navigate their online classes, I know it’s not obvious and intuitive for everyone.
In fact, back in 2015-16, Ruffalo Noel Levitz’s National Online Learners Satisfaction and Priorities Report listed the following challenges in online learning in terms of the gap between student expectations and reality:
Student assignments are not clearly defined in the syllabus
The quality of instruction is not excellent
Faculty are not responsive to student needs
Tuition paid is not a worthwhile investment
Faculty do not provide timely feedback on students’ progress
That was pre-pandemic and before a bunch of people were slammed into online teaching in an emergency. If these data raise your blood pressure or threat assessment and defenses, you can probably take a deep breath and chill because if you’re reading stuff from this newsletter? It ain’t you. Turn all of those statements into positive ones for yourself. I know you.
(Community college educators: We do fare better in some of these areas, btw; see table six.)
But we can all continue to improve.
I can read course organization and design in many of these responses because they’re factors that influence student learning. I don’t know how the participants interpret “quality of instruction,” for example, but I’m willing to bet that course organization is part of it. It’s difficult to separate “good teaching” and “solid organization.” Hence, this discussion.
First, the theory:
I was fortunate to have picked up a Psych minor in college, and in two courses (educational psychology and a course on learning theory), I learned about cognitive load, including intrinsic vs. extraneous cognitive load:
Basically, intrinsic load focuses on the cognitive resources required to complete a task. I think of intrinsic load as the “good” cognitive load, the mental energy learning requires. Extraneous cognitive load is the pile of cognitive resources devoted to sorting through the details of how information is presented. In other words, having to click sixteen different places to figure out where to submit an assignment increases extraneous cognitive load.
I was especially sensitive to this assertion: Faculty may “unwittingly increase learners’ extraneous cognitive load by presenting materials that require students to mentally integrate mutually referring, disparate sources of information” (Sweller and Chandler, 1991, p. 353).
I link that idea directly to course organization. Clear course structure and clarity in teaching (part of which is organization) have been correlated to student motivation and persistence while also increasing performance and grades. First gen and lower SES students benefit, specifically (Wang et al., 2015; Roksa et al., 2017).
Cognitive load has been a foundation of my adult life, driving many of my decisions in teaching, leadership, and parenting. For example, people who have worked with me know that I will take care to reduce cognitive load whenever possible by limiting bureaucratic burdens. Fifteen people in the department are attending the same conference? Great. I’ll complete a template of the funding request form so that individuals can just add personal information and submit. We don’t need or want faculty devoting their cognitive resources to excessive bureaucracy, especially when those tasks really don’t matter in the end. They’re just check-boxes.
Additionally, if we want “compliance” (ugh) on any given matter, we need to make complying as easy as possible. Reducing cognitive load helps, in my experience.
I’m especially proud of my commitment to reducing cognitive load in teaching because students consistently comment on their satisfaction with course organization. Below is a representative sample of the feedback along with something specific I notice about the nature of it:
First and foremost, I have to say out of my other three courses, this class has been the most interactive and the most organized of them all. I can tell that you love to do your job based on how much you keep us up to date with everything. I am also a huge fan of the weekly checklists!
She has developed an organized course and great learning materials. I appreciate her empathy towards her students!
The content was easy to follow and understand. Everything on the D2L page was very VERY organized. This class has the most organized page by far out of all my classes.
Greatly organized. I know what to do before it’s due and I know where to find all the content.
Easy and very organized instructions
I love how you make the For Class videos, they help a lot.
Checklists, lesson content, dropbox, and discussion boards were very organized and easy to access.
I love how put together you are as a teacher and how you know what you’re doing.
And on and on. One thing I notice about the feedback term over term is how often students link their perspectives to feelings. They consistently use words like “love,” “feel,” “empathy,” and “care” in their feedback about course organization (read that in my incredulous voice!). Often, the first sentence is about something structural; the second is about how it made them feel. Positive emotions always surround the feedback on organization.
Weird but meaningful. I also note that students’ completion of assignments on time (and EARLY!) has increased (even during the pandemic), and in the video, I share that I’ve seen a reduction in emailed questions about the course.
Course organization is not flashy, but when done well, it serves as a solid foundation for a pedagogy of care because it demonstrates that I’m thinking about the student experience and committed to reducing their extraneous cognitive loads, both of which aid in their learning.
Key features of this approach:
My model centers the checklist
Links and content are embedded in clear, organized, sequential manner
Each unit looks the same: Writers know what to expect
Cognitive resources are devoted to course content, not attempts to figure out navigation and expectations
The specific tactics:
Checklists with embedded content
Weekly News (Monday mornings, 6am)
Dropboxes with embedded content
Use of calendar feature, linked to checklists
If you went through asynch training in the early days, maybe you learned things that are very different (and honestly, I went through training a few years back that was also nothing like this). One thing we’d be wise to remember is that private and commercial entities — the platforms our students are accessing daily — employ strong user design features2. Undoubtedly, students will bring an expectation for intuitive design to their online learning experience.
Thus, I made a Q&D video to demonstrate how this specific design actually works. The design not perfect, by any stretch, but it does the job I need it to do.
This video features Brightspace: I haven’t operated in another LMS for awhile, so I’m not sure about their capabilities. I know Canvas and Blackboard both include checklist features, but they might function a bit differently. Feel free to drop your comments about how these ideas could translate into your LMS below.
If you have a course organization pattern you love, great! I’m not here to fight about it, and I’m not selling you anything. This video is just for people who might be looking for additional ideas.
Keeping the reduction of “mutually referring, disparate sources of information” in mind is central to this conversation. Happy to chat further3!
Click here for text file (previously named “transcript” until a student said, “Oh, I didn’t know what that meant.” Frame of reference matters!)4
For the operational purists (I’m with ya!), I am using “course organization” and “course design” somewhat interchangeably to encapsulate a giant bucket of stuff that more nuanced writers might separate: I’m thinking less about how content is organized and more about the architecture of the course. For me, then, both organization (flow) and design (interaction) relate to architecture. Content organization is different.
See this link for some basic commentary on UX. Notta lotta diversity here, but you’ll get the idea. One thing my own design does is to smooth the flow of what are — invariably — the limitations of the LMS in design, so while it’s not fancy or flashy, it does exploit the inherent challenges of a linear LMS platform in a way that creates a smoother experience. I know sometimes people embed other products to enhance the flexibility of the LMS, and I think that’s great, but it’s not for me. I also know that people often see course design as their opportunity to flex their own creativity, but that’s not for me either. I haven’t seen evidence of a link between “creative course design” and “student learning,” so it’s not a priority for me. If it is for you, great!
Some further reading: Martin et al. (2019): Award-winning faculty online teaching practices…
One thing I didn’t say is that I do value asking students to “figure stuff out,” but that’s a process for the actual work of the course, not the bureaucracy of the course.
I'm setting up beefed-up checklists in my 101 now. Great tip about adding links and putting everything in one place! Students will love this. Thanks for the tip!
This article had me screaming "YES" throughout!