Create and Curate Instructional Content
This final course design stage involves creating and curating the instructional materials that give students the information they need to complete the assessments successfully. Instructor-created content can be synchronous lecture (in-person or in Zoom), video recordings, PowerPoints, etc. (check out the best practices on Create Digital Content). Course content also often includes external sources like guest speakers (in-person or in Zoom), web articles, scholarly sources, TEDtalks, etc., where content curation skills are important.
Ultimately, you need to balance the amount of instructor-created and external materials to maintain teacher presence without reinventing the wheel and/or burning out. A good first step is to explore what content already covers your material well (textbook, YouTube, etc.), then focus your energy on creating original content for the parts of your material that you can’t find good content for.
Lastly, when creating and curating instructional content, it’s important to consider the diversity of your students. Mix up the methods/media that you use, like in-person lecture, recorded video, podcast, infographic, text, etc. This will support students by giving them a variety of ways to connect with your content (more UDL!).
Here’s how that mix of content might look in an online course (EDME 552:
- Content for lesson on Netiquette & eProfessionalism
- Instructor-created | Video: Introductory video with discussion of Twitter debate
- External | Chapter from free ebook: “Let’s Talk: Effectively Communicating with Your Online Students”
- External | Web articles: Three articles that discuss how to teach netiquette
- External | Web pages: Four sample “Tip Sheets” for students about netiquette
- External | Videos: Four sample YouTube videos for students about netiquette
- Note: All external sources (except for the samples) are accompanied by instructor-created guiding questions
Here’s how that mix of content might look in a F2F course (DIGL 101)
- Content for data infographics:
- External | Video: “Visualize This: How to Tell a Story with Data”
- External | Video: “Making Infographics”
- External | Infographics: Collection of four sample infographic projects
- Instructor-Led | Class Discussion: Presenting good and bad examples of infographics and noting best practices via class discussion and instructor direction
- External | Video: “Fundamentals of Graphic Design”
- External | Video: “7 Common Types of Infographics
- Instructor-Created | Text: Information in Canvas on purpose and audience
- Instructor-Created | Video: “What should be my infographic topic?”
For help on adding content items to your Canvas modules, please see the “Create Content” section of our Canvas: Faculty Introduction page of the ITS blog.