Building An Online Course - Part 2 - The Tutorial
In the previous post, we discussed the initial planning process that takes place on paper before jumping into your learning management system to start building an online course. Having an idea of how your course will progress and what will be expected of participants before you start building is also an integral first step to preparing your tutorials.
In my online courses, the tutorials are inspired by EduProtocols Smart Starts and the processes by which video games teach new players how to play. The goals of the tutorials are to:
build community
help the instructor learn more about the participants as well as to begin to build relationships with them
and to gradually teach the key technology skills participants will need for the course in a fun way before they start working with the course’s actual content
Another bonus to the tutorials is that because they do not relate to the content of the course, they are a quick win for participants to complete (they should be quick and easy for most users) AND they can be completed for a book study before the participants have access to a book. I found for our online book studies that sometimes it took some time to finalize course enrollment - sometimes the cutoff for enrollment was the start date of the course - and that in turn impacted how quickly participants ordered their books. The tutorials give you some flexibility in timing so participants don’t feel automatically behind when the course starts if they just got enrolled and are waiting on books. (It also helps if you can find videos or podcasts of the content from the first chapter or two as options for people who still don’t have their books as the first few weeks progress.)
To craft your tutorials, you first need to have a firm understanding of both the technical capabilities of your learning management system and already know how you’re going to ask participants to demonstrate their learning.
For example, in Google Classroom, there is no button to use in “Ask A Question” short-answer assignments to allow participants to post files. Therefore, I would know I could use that post type to hold discussions easily, but I would have to teach some workarounds in my tutorials if I wanted participants to post files for others to peer review in discussions.
In contrast, Schoology does allow discussions where files can be attached to participants’ posts BUT it does not have the seamless sharing built-in like Google Classroom has… so to make sure files would be compatible with everyone I included a tutorial for how to download a file as a PDF and attach it to a discussion post in my Schoology courses.
Scaffold the progression of tutorials from easiest to most difficult AND try to consider how they could reinforce each other. For example, maybe practice downloading as a PDF for submitting a regular assignment and then practice it again when practicing attaching a file to a discussion post. Only have tutorials for the skills your course requires - for example, only include a tutorial on how to record and attach a screencast video if you know there are assignments in the course that will require that skill.
And finally, if you’ll be building multiple courses with similar tutorials it may be tempting to re-use them from one course to another. However, if the same people take more than one of your courses it may get tedious to do the same things over and over. If you can find fun new twists on how to complete the same skills in different courses, it may help keep participants engaged.
For each tutorial, I made a video of myself performing the steps required and I attached it to the instructions for each in my course. I would also sometimes link the videos in the first few assignments for people to refer to if they had a gap between completing the tutorial and diving into the course.
In my Bold School book study, there were four tutorial items:
Introduce Yourself
Discussion posts can be seen by all participants in the course. Share who you are, your district, what you teach, and your favorite movie and/or sport, since those two subjects are used a lot as metaphors in this book!
Skill: Practices how to post to a Schoology discussionSubmit Your First Assignment
Assignments can only be seen by your instructor. Create a text-only assignment submission where you either share what you hope to get out of the course, any questions you may have for the instructor, or just your favorite ice cream flavor.
Skill: Practices how to submit a basic assignment.Personalized Reader’s Guide
Complete the Google Form to receive your personalized guide for reading the book. The file will include the schedule for when all the work is due for this course (image below.) Add your name to the file, download it as a PDF, and then attach it to an assignment that will just be seen by the instructor.
Skill: Practices how to download a file as a PDF and how to submit an assignment with a file attachmentPosting Files To Discussions
Open the linked template, make a copy of it in your Google Drive account, and fill in the two text boxes on the page. Download it as a PDF and post it to the discussion below as an attachment to your post.
Skill: Practices how to make a copy of a template, download it as a PDF, and attach it to a discussion post
Tutorials are not graded, but they are based on single point rubrics. Participants have to complete each tutorial successfully before they can continue to the course content. In my book studies in Schoology, I was able to use the completion rules feature to allow participants to continue through the tutorials automatically after they submitted in order to unlock the course’s first section. We’ll discuss structuring the sections of a course and how completion rules work in the next post.
Bold School Book Study Reader’s Guide
The colors of the sections correspond to the color of the folders of each section in Schoology. The numbers in brackets represent a rounded-up estimate of how long in minutes each activity is likely to take. Note: Links in this image are no longer active.