Instructional Materials
LEARN: What and Why
In any course, there are key subject matter content concepts and skills that students need to learn. After clearly defining your course learning objectives and key assessments (i.e. how they’ll demonstrate what they’ve learned), the next step is to choose the instructional materials and learning activities that will lead students to achieve the learning goals (Wiggins & McTighe, 2012).
(Determining Materials and Activities: Step 3 of Backwards Design (UBD) (Wiggins & McTighe, 2012)
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Quality instructional materials are fundamental to student engagement in your course, as they not only make the student experience more interesting and enjoyable, but also reflect the instructor’s effort and interest—and therefore contribute to building the student-instructor relationship.
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- use materials that are interesting and up-to-date
- ensure the material is accessible
- present content in multiple ways in order to appeal to students’ different learning styles and align with Universal Design for Learning principles
- review materials to ensure they align with course learning objectives
- ensure there are diverse and unbiased representations of gender, race, ethnicities, etc. (Medel & Pournaghshband, 2017)
ENGAGE: How to do it
Textbooks
Digital or print textbooks and anthologies are commonly used in many college courses, online and in person. A good textbook can help anchor any course, but it’s not always easy to choose the right textbook to accompany your course. Here a few things to consider in selecting an anchor textbook for your online course (Lochiatto, 2009):
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OER are created by individual educators and institutions that seek to provide an alternative to the rising costs of education—and the create a more participatory, collaborative and global approach to teaching and learning.
APPLY to your course
Review your course, asking yourself:
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- Schedule a Zoom meeting and practice Meeting With Your Class in Zoom
- Request an Echo360 course, download Echo360 Universal Capture, and record a practice session
- Record a practice VoiceThread
- Add Library Reserves to your Moodle course
Explore the OER available on the UMass Library OER Webpage
References & Resources
The Council of Chief State School Officers. 2016, December 4. “What is OER?” William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
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