XplanaZine

Updates by Catherine Kerley on July 13, 2006

What do you like most about developing online courses?
The thing I enjoy most about developing online courses is that it’s like one of those candies from the Willy Wonka movie — the original with Gene Wilder - an everlasting Gobstopper — only without literally turning into a blueberry at the end of the candy. But, as I see it, online courses are like Gobstoppers - with the succession of flavors. I start working on a course and the taste of one thing happens - then I taste two or three more things. Slowly all of that sort of fades away and is gone. Then I start getting hints that run through seven or eight completely separate, completely distinct flavors like a color wheel scale. That’s what each course is for me — a color wheel of new flavors that compliment each other and all fall into place to form a whole — an Everlasting Gobstopper — when the course is finished.

How do you develop an effective course Web site design to help learners be able to classify and organize knowledge into categories?
I have to be a juggler of sorts. That seems to be the most required and remarkable aspect of developing online course Web sites. Whatever the subject — from the journeys involved in Humanities or Social Science or Physics or Cultural Studies or Business Administration to Museum Studies — I juggle the intricate details and try to highlight the humanity behind each course. Locating and highlighting the humanity is what helps the learners classify and organize knowledge into categories.

We design our course Web sites — usually — in four themed units plus a final project. Also, each course follows a content format that helps learners feel comfortable with each new course — they know what to look for a where to find it on each page. At the same time, each course has its own personality — its own humanity — this is the part that intrigues me the most — this is what makes each course fun and interesting, and this is also what makes each course work.

After a while, I sort of start to learn to simply forget about the things that get dropped in the juggling — they are usually things that go against what we’ve learned works for our learners anyway — instead I keep the things in the air I know the students will find interesting while remaining true to the subject matter expert’s content. Otherwise I’d end up with courses that confused learners and each new course a learner enrolled in would be a new, confusing relationship to work through instead of the exciting journey it should be. I don’t want courses to fall into that bizarre limbo position between content and learner friendliness.

How do you modify the interface to facilitate connection-making between course concepts?
I find so many stories in each course — so many opportunities for connection-making. I think that there is a place where the interface realizes that students have to move through the course with ease — and that they have to see the connections between concepts in order to navigate through each course’s journey. I can’t separate these concepts - they form who each course is. In the end, though, it’s what each student chooses for his or her personal journey.

Each course can work as a guided tour, or as a springboard for unique and individual journeys. The connection-making comes in the cold and the ice and the snow. And this ice smoke — the connections between concepts — blows back and forth. It could be that the smoke is a memory of some thing learned in another course — a connection that is linking more concepts together — creating new scaffolding — encouraging the student’s metacognition.

In what way do you foreground learning objectives and desired outcomes so that students keep those things in mind as they approach the course?
I make sure the Learning Objectives get to ride shotgun for each course — and in each individual unit. They work as a Navigator of sorts — they have out the map and offer the learner suggestions for routes to travel while in each course. So sometimes when the learners follow the Objectives, they are pleasantly surprised to be led to a series of streets lined with stately old houses — each with a well-kept garden that is blooming with color.

Once in the heart of the village — in the midst of the Learning Objectives — the learner steps into one of the old Victorian homes to discover that each of its rooms is filled with more maps to new and intriguing places the learner can visit. The learner might grab a few maps and take off — or he or she might decide to slow down a bit, to stroll down the streets and visit more of the houses and spend some time in their gardens. Or the Navigator might lead the learner down a stretch of country highway to an isolated portion of the Adirondacks. There, the learner might camp with no electricity and not another soul in sight for hundreds of miles in any direction. For bathing, the Navigator might suggest rainwater collected in a large bucket. But whatever the route taken, the learner will travel through each course with the guidance of the Learning Objectives.

What strategies do you use to encourage students to demonstrate their attainment of course learning objectives effectively?
Sometimes, when students were younger, people would tell them not to make things up. Sometimes the students listened; sometimes they never listened. Now they are adults and they are in a course where they need to take advantage of the making things up part of their brains; this astonishes many of them. It’s that ability to make things up that helps students think objectively about course content. That ability helps them make connections between ideas and theories and Science and Humanities and Math.

Making things up — being creative and not fearing creativity — is what I try to encourage in each student. We put in clear Learning Objectives and Guiding Questions for each unit so they have a springboard. But the thing is, some of the Guiding Questions might catch the learner off guard — that the idea. If a learner is caught off guard by a question, he or she will start to question the question itself, and learning has occurred.

After completing some of our courses, students might event think about finding those people who tried to stop them from making things up. They might even try to find out if anything shocking really did happen. They might keep wondering about this as they continue through their curriculum and come across more questions to question.

In the meantime, I’m still trying to find out what shocking things I might bring into being from making things up. Perhaps I need to devise a foil hat to keep the people who tell me to stop making things up out of my head.

When do you use color? How do you use color schemes, and what organizing principles do you use?
I let each course dictate the colors I use, when I use them, and where they are used in the course. One course may feel like passing a sudden thunderstorm in Florida — with more lightening happening in thirty minutes than I’d ever thought I’d see in a lifetime. Another course might feel more like a windmill field in Oklahoma. Whatever the course, each one has it’s own journey through reality and imagination. When I originally did this interview, I was working on a course, Personal and Family Narratives. At that time, this course was completely in black and white — nothing but gray tones. No others colors came out to play for this course — well, except for the small crimson OU logo that was at the top of each page and the hyperlinks, which were in blue and green for easy identification.

That course has changed some now — it’s still primary gray tones — but a few other colors decided to finally come along for the ride this course asks students to travel. Oddly enough, the colors that came to this course are yellows and oranges — the colors of road construction signs. Of course that totally works for this course — it takes students down the highways of their memories and asks them to re-construct those memories and images into written narratives — into their memoirs.

Another thing that has changed since I first did this interview is that some courses, like Science as a Process and Mathematics for Liberal Studies (at that time), had color that was dictated by the image that corresponded to the unit content. The course that does this now — for the background color — is Introduction to Interdisciplinary Life Sciences.

Mostly, the graphics dictate the color schemes. I try to manipulate color schemes to compliment the course, rather than distract the learners. But what it all really comes down to with the use of color is that with anything that has to do with creativity, there’s a particular nakedness tangled up in it all. Each course has to be willing to bare more to the learner or the learner won’t be comfortable with that course. Each course allows itself to speak through color in a way that many people wouldn’t dare.

How do you keep from having a chaotic presentation?
The first thing I do to avoid Chaos in a course’s presentation is open my arms and let it in. I’ve found that if I try to avoid Chaos, it will show up no matter what. If I acknowledge it, however, it’s content to sit beside me and let me work in a format that is well organized. At the time of the originally interview, I was surprised ones morning to discover that what at first seemed to be random paragraphs were really course section overviews for Personal and Family Narratives.

Suddenly, I had real insight into how this course needed more organization. Mostly, I follow an established format that our development team put together through studying Best Practices and through evaluating which courses work and why. But, if I try to push through that and ignore Chaos, it will show up and cause way more trouble than if I let it in from the jump to have a chat — plus I never know what fabulous ideas Chaos might have — the ideas may not work in the course I’m working on at that moment, but the right course for the idea always shows up eventually.

When is it most important to organize and order information that is incorporated in your online course website?
Always. If information isn’t presented in an organized fashion, the learner will get lost and become discouraged. I organize the information in a somewhat standardized format so students know where to look for what they need to know in each course. This does not, however, take away from each course’s personality. And of course, some Subject Matter Experts don’t follow our established format to the letter. But they always follow it enough for the course to work and for the students to be able to find everything easily.

What are the elements that ABSOLUTELY need to be incorporated in a course portal or home page?
I have to make sure the Home page has all the information each student needs to travel through the entire course with ease. The students have to know what the entire course is about, what they are expected to take with them after they complete the course, what textbooks they need, what work they will be required to do for the course, and how to find each portion of the course. It is important to organize each component so that the students don’t have to go on a scavenger hunt each time they start a new course. Each course is different with its own personality, but the student needs to be able to find what he or she needs easily so the journey through the course can begin.

Do you enjoy designing course Web sites? Why? (or why not?)
Definitely! Each time I get to design a new course — or redesign an existing one — it’s like having a new friend to trade lipstick with — This is my color and brand, what do you wear? — That sort of thing. One course might use Maybelline and the next one might insist on Mac while another complains about all the animal testing that goes on in cosmetic companies, so she makes her own lip balm out of African Shea Butter, essential oils, and bee’s wax. Whatever the brand, each course brings a new understanding of Online curriculum with it. What has always seemed to work before might suddenly present a problem in a new course that we never anticipated before. This problem brings a new understanding of organization and/or presentation that we might have missed otherwise.

Building each course is an adventure, full of all things adventures bring. Sometimes I might feel like a small child holding my mother’s hand while pointing to a dark figure — “Mommy, scary!” Then I discover that it’s only Gene Simmons, who isn’t so bad when he washes his face. Other times, I’m the one holding the child’s hand while we run into the cold Atlantic on the coast of Oregon only to be chased and splashed by playful Golden Retrievers.