"I can't find it," is a common complaint from students whose instructors use online classrooms. This can arise from students not being attentive, but it often results from poorly organized and labeled materials.

Modules, pages, and assignments can be structured to follow a pattern that will help students anticipate and locate materials. 

Avoid your course being a list of items. 

This makes scrolling necessary and makes it difficult to find exactly what is needed quickly. Try these strategies for organizing your courses, modules, or weeks:

    • Divide your course into reasonable "chunks
    • Within chunks, use Text Headers to labels sections, then indent items under each header
    • Use Pages to organize items (e.g. a page with links to the readings)

Use Collapsed Topics or Tiles 

With he upgrade to Moodle 4.2 in summer of 2023, topics and weeks became collapsible by default. The Collapsed Topics and Tiles course formats are still available to those who want the additional information provided by them. By changing the course format to one of these options, the number of items on your course page is significantly reduced.

Gives meaningful names to items.

Meaningful names both hep students organize the materials in their minds, but help them find materials for review. Meaningful names can also facilitate the use of the find command to locate content on pages. Try these strategies for naming items:

    • Label chunks to reflect the content (e.g. "Writing Business Plans" rather than "Week 8" or "Module 5")
    • Within chunks, avoid generic names (e.g. "Readings on Muscles" rather than "Readings")

 

While consistency is helpful, instructors should avoid courses that appear to be "canned." Consider adding some novelty. For example, introduce different types of discussions or other interactions. Have students lead discussions. Vary the types of assessments you include. We know that courses that are too predictable are perceived to be boring to students, but those that are too unpredictable can be incomprehensible. Between boring and incomprehensible is where learning occurs. Introduce just a little novelty in each chunk.





Last modified: Friday, December 8, 2023, 1:18 PM