ESIA Online

In this section, you will find links to helpful videos and readings to help with designing your course and your syllabus for online learning. When designing your course for online instruction, you may want to evaluate the learning objectives for your course, and how these might change for online instruction. 

Key topics in this section include: Backwards Design Theory, Bloom’s Taxonomy, learning objectives, and global instruction.

Course Design Theory

In Backwards Design Theory, the key concept is to first think of the goals you want each of your students to achieve by the end of the semester, and then match readings and assignments to those goals directly. You’ll find that students will achieve greater learning outcomes when course materials are viewed within the lens of a “purposive goal.”

Relevant Readings

• Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, What is Backwards Design Theory?. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. 1998. 

• Gollub, J. P. “Learning and Understanding Improving Advanced Study of Mathematics and Science in U.S. High Schools.” National Academy Press. Chapter 6, Learning with Understanding: Seven Principles. 

Helpful Guides

• George Washington University, Office of Academic Planning & Assessment. Writing Learning Outcomes or Objectives. 
• L. Dee Fink. A Self-Directed Guide to Designing Courses for Significant Learning. Jossey-Bass Inc. 2003.
• SHIFT e-Learning. A Quick, No-Nonsense Guide to Basic Instructional Design Theory. August 2019
• Patricia Armstrong. Bloom's Taxonomy. Vanderbilt University, Center for Teaching.
• George Washington University, University Teaching & Learning Center. Taxonomies of Learning Outcomes.

The University Teaching and Learning Center

The Teaching and Learning Center provides several online resources for writing course objectives, designing courses, and developing teaching strategies.

ESIA Syllabus and Online Templates

We've created a syllabus template to guide your syllabus development. We have also created an enhanced online Blackboard shell that includes widgets for both faculty and student support, and recommended formatting for course organization. Please email [email protected] to request the zip file for the Blackboard template to upload into your course. You may also find it in our Online Pedagogy Workshop page.

Incorporating International Students

When designing your course for the fall, It’s important to consider where your students will be taking their courses. Are you teaching international students? We included a helpful guide for teaching GW international students which provides tips on how to incorporate global diversity into your classroom. This guide is provided by the English for Academic Purposes Office. 

Getting Started: Basic Classroom Technology

It is recommended to build out your live-sync sessions before the start of the semester, and test it out with family, friends, or colleagues. Here's how to get started:

Blackboard Collaborate

1. Enter your Blackboard course, click "Tools" in the left-hand menu, then select Blackboard Collaborate Ultra.
2. In the new screen, click "Create Session."
3. Input details for the test session you will conduct in the provided fields, and be sure to select the box for "Guest Access." Select "participant" for the guest role if you want your friend or family member's access to reflect the default student setting; select "presenter" or "moderator" if you would like to test these options (e.g., if you plan to invite a guest speaker to your class).
4. Finally, click "Create" in the bottom right-hand corner. You will now be able to copy the address under "guest link" and email/share this with your friend or family member. 

WebEx

1. To begin using your Webex account, login to gwu.webex.com with your GW email address ([email protected]) and corresponding password.
2. At the top of the homescreen, you will see a "Personal Room" link that you can email/share with your friend or family member. This is the same link you can use to access your personal room, and that you will share with students who are looking to meet with you for office hours.
3. You can also click “Schedule a Meeting” to schedule times to meet in advance.  Webex will send you an email link, which you can share with others.

How to Videos

The ESIA Online team recorded several technical workshops to provide technical assistance to faculty that are available upon request: [email protected].

Additional Resources

• ESIA Online Pedagogy Workshops: Please be sure to check out the Faculty Pedagogy Community on your Blackboard site for workshops related to moving in person instruction online. 
• The Columbian College of Arts & Sciences offers faculty workshops on several topics related to remote instruction. View a list of upcoming workshops 
• GW Office of Marketing & Creative Services offers training every month on a range of topics. Topics for the month of August include: Digital Accessibility, GW Blogs, and creating short links using GW’s go.gwu.edu tool. Register for an upcoming course

In this section, you will find readings, videos, and helpful guides for encouraging student engagement and incorporating elements into your course that facilitate collaboration. 

This section will address the following questions:

• How do you create an online course that mirrors a face-to-face course in its ability to facilitate discussion, student interaction, and collaboration? 

• How do you build a sense of community when students and professors are engaging in the course from different parts of the globe?  

Relevant Readings

• Cornell University, Center for Teaching Innovation. Introduction to Collaborative Learning. 
• InstructionalDesign. Social Learning Theory (Albert Bandura). 
• Milman, Natalie B. “Strategies for Participating in Online Conferences and Discussions" Distance Learning. December 1, 2015. 92-95. 
• Rob Kelly. Making Online Discussion Boards Work for Skills-Based Courses. Faculty Focus. November 11, 2010. 
• George Washington University, University Teaching and Learning Center. Reviewing Your Course Delivery.

Tips and Ideas for Promoting Student Collaboration

Community Building

• Encourage students to reach out to one another and share phone numbers. Students can see each other’s names and emails on Blackboard. Peer support is invaluable in higher ed and classmates become part of their network of experts when they graduate! 
• Encourage students to participate in a semester-long challenge. For example, have your students pledge to walk a certain amount of miles for a good cause, be pen pals and exchange letters with people in nursing homes or orphanages, etc.  Have students suggest organizations and vote on which one to collectively support.
• Encourage students to exhibit GW pride by wearing GW gear, writing with GW pens and notepads, drinking out of GW mugs and water bottles during class.  Professors can also participate in these spirit-building activities!

Utilize Discussion Boards in Blackboard

• For a more institutionalized approach to community building, assign students to respond to weekly discussion prompts on Blackboard. Require that students respond to the prompt as well as comment on the responses of two (or more) peers discussion replies. Discussion prompts could include thoughtful questions on class material, or links to current news articles that reflect class topics in practice.

Utilize the Breakout Session Function in Blackboard Collaborate Ultra

• During your live synchronous discussion, you can facilitate breakout sessions and build community among students groups by grouping them with the same peers for every session, or have them randomized each time so students connect with others in smaller settings.

Class Notes

• Encourage students to start a shared Google doc or spreadsheet where they can write notes and contribute collectively. At the end of the semester, you can track and grade contributions so that no one “free-rides” on the notes of the group. Or you, you can leave it as an ungraded resource for students. 

Group Projects

• For group projects, you can facilitate groups by asking students to fill out a Google sheet that asks a series of questions (what are their top 3 areas of interest, the class topics which are the top 3 they'd be interested in working with given their areas of interest). Then group students based on their responses.

University Teaching & Learning Center Resources

The University Teaching and Learning Center offers helpful guides for choosing the right tools based on the type of interaction and outcome you need. These guides help you decide which tool is right: discussion board, synchronous sessions, or group projects.

Helpful Videos

• Start with Interaction Purpose 
• Asynchronous vs. Synchronous Interactions 
• Conducting Effective Online Discussions
• Tips for Discussion Success
• Building Community 
• Fostering Online Collaboration

Tips for an Engaging Synchronous Session

• Have students turn on their video cameras
• Use the Raise Hand function in Blackboard to avoid any confusion or talking over each other. 
• Encourage students to use the chat function to ask questions and make comments about lecture/discussion content. 
• Use Breakout sessions in Blackboard Collaborate so that students can discuss ideas and brainstorm before coming together as a class. 
• Use the polling option in Blackboard Collaborate to ask questions and gauge learning throughout the session.

For further reading on synchronous interaction please visit the University Teaching and Learning website. 

Organizing Your Course Facilitates Student Engagement

Keeping your course organized in Blackboard will help students find discussion boards and keep track of course materials including assignments, assessments, where to go for live synch sessions, and how to access course materials. Effective syllabus and course design help keep students informed of course expectations so that they can engage with course materials effectively. The ESIA Online Team developed a syllabus template and course templates for faculty to import into their Blackboard courses. If you would like to request the Blackboard course shell, please email [email protected].

This section addresses the following objectives: 

• Multimedia and modality principles including: Coherence principle, signaling principle, Redundancy principle, Spatial contiguity, and Temporal contiguity. 
• Identifying ways to incorporate multimedia in an online learning environment.
• Comparing and contrasting methods and tools to engage students through multimodal learning environments. 

Relevant Readings

• Caroline Lawless. Multimodal Learning: Engaging Your Learner’s Senses. LearnUpon. October 24, 2019.
• Michael Sankey, Dawn Birch, and Michael Gardiner. Engaging students through multimodal learning environments: The journey continues. Proceedings ascilite. 2010.
• Lorena Marchetti and Peter Cullen. A Multimodal Approach in the Classroom for Creative Learning and Teaching. Psychological and creative approaches to language teaching. 39-51.
• Didem Yesil. 5 Multimedia Principles For Your Online Course. eLearning Industry. September 26, 2015.
• Sky V. King. Multimedia in Online Courses. Florida International University. June 16, 2016
• Steven R. Crawford. Designing Multimedia Presentations for Your Course. Quality Matters. December 18, 2019.
• Ljubojevic, Milos et al. “Using Supplementary Video in Multimedia Instruction as a Teaching Tool to Increase Efficiency of Learning and Quality of Experience.” International review of research in open and distance learning. 2014. 275–291.
• Cal State's Teaching with Low-Bandwidth Guide

Videos

• Multimodal Learning
• Maximize Learning From Your Narrated Presentations

Mini-lectures that you create are a great way to personalize your course and update content. They can be done as video or as audio. Video, of course, lets students see you and what you're talking about, from charts and graphs to photos and movies of people, places, and things. But, don't rule out audio. If you don't need the graphics to illustrate your content, an audio podcast is easy to make and edit and gives students something they can easily listen to on their mobile device.

This brief video from GW's Health Sciences IMPACT Initiative team focuses on tips for producing a strong presentation that promotes learning from video, but the same planning process applies to audio recordings.

Teaching with Technology Matrix

Use this Teaching with Technology Matrix provided by LAI to quickly match the most common teaching functions (what you want to in your class) with the appropriate online tool.

Tools for Creating Videos

There are so many easy-to-use tools available for creating your own short videos. Here are a few ideas to get you started. Two other ways to get help are searching online for tutorials and visiting GW's Instructional Technology Lab for one-on-one instruction.

Echo360 and Narrated Powerpoint Presentations are the two recommended methods for recording in class lecture videos. 

To Create a Narrated Powerpoint with video:

1. Go to PowerPoint > File > Export > Create a Video > Record Timings and Narrations
2. After you are done recording, PowerPoint will let you export the whole thing to a video. You can do multiple takes per slide as well. 

To Use Echo360 (recommended method for Welcome Videos):

1. Go to Blackboard and go to the content area where you want the video to be. 
2. Click on Tools at the top and go to GWU Lecture Capture. Name the lecture and click Submit.
3. Now go to the File you just named > (If you don't have Echo 360 it will ask you to download it). Once you have the file, you'll see a button at the top that says "Create". Click Launch and it will upload the screen. If you want it to just be you talking, then you will be the only "input," but you can also have slides or a document next to it as the second input.

Additional guides and instructions for creating recorded lectures: 

• Create Narrated PowerPoint Presentations (Windows | Mac)
• Optimize Narrated PowerPoint Presentations for Web Delivery using PowerPoint (Windows | Mac)
• Optimize Narrated PowerPoint Presentations for Web Delivery using iSpring (iSpring Example) - Software available in the Instructional Technology Lab
• Create Screen Recordings (Windows 10 | Mac)

Create Do It Yourself Videos:

• Make a Webcam Video (Windows | Mac)
• Upload a Video to YouTube and Embed it in Blackboard (PDF | Video)
• Caption your Video using YouTube (Video)

Create Lectures with Personal Capture:

• Get Started (PDF)
• How to Record (Windows | Mac)
• How to Edit (Windows | Mac)
• How to Publish (Windows | Mac)

ESIA Online Expert Media Inventory

You can access over 200 studio-produced expert videos that feature ESIA faculty and invited practitioners to add to your course.  Please reach out to [email protected] for a list of topics and video links.

Open Source: Free Online Videos from Harvard

With many colleges holding their fall classes online, professors at other institutions are making their course materials shareable with their colleagues.  For example, professors at Harvard university and Duke university have allowed us to use their free video lecture content in our classes.  Check with other professors in your network to see if others have also created sharable content that you can use in your classes.

If you find a good resource worth sharing, please pass it along to [email protected] and we will make it accessible in our Pedagogy Workshop page on Blackboard.

This section will address the following topics:

• Evaluating assignments and assessments relative to their learning objectives

• Using assignments and assessments as learning tools

• Designing and crafting assessments in Blackboard

Relevant Readings

• Brown University, The Harriet W. Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning. (n.d.). Characteristics of Effective Online Assignments. Retrieved from:  https://www.brown.edu/sheridan/teaching-learning-resources/teaching-resources/course-design/enhancing-student-learning-technology/effective-online-assignments
• Harrison, D. (2020). Online Education and Authentic Assessment. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from:  https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2020/04/29/how-discourage-student-cheating-online-exams-opinion  
• Lieberman, M. (2018). Q&A: Toward Better Assessments in Online Courses. Retrieved from:  https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2018/10/31/qa-strategies-better-assessments-online-learning
• Muller, K., et al. (2019). Assessing Student Learning in the Online Modality. National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment. Retrieved from:  https://www.learningoutcomesassessment.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Occasional-Paper-40.pdf. 

Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs) 

Classroom assessment techniques (CATS) help individual teachers obtain useful feedback on what, how much, and how well their students are learning. They can be used as stand-alone activities or alongside larger activities to help refocus your teaching in process.

The GW Library's  Instructional Core website provides tips and resources for implementing CATs in the classroom. 

Videos

• Designing Learner-Centered Assessments in Online Environments

In general, we recommend considering the goals and objectives you have in mind for your course, and weigh some of the "standard" assignment and assessment practices against those goals. For example, in introductory or foundational learning courses could students do rewrites of papers based on useful feedback?  What benefit would a take-home exam have to a time-restricted one?  Do your course policies reflect the course objectives (for example, if professionalism is an important soft skill you’d like your students to build during the course, try instituting strict late policies on papers or assignments, etc).