Instructional Materials
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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):
- Thorough coverage of course topics
- Currency—in content, edition, knowledge, etc.
- Alignment of your learning objectives and the approach and resources in the book
- Readability—clarity in definitions, examples, graphics, etc.
- Clear instructions and examples of real-world applications of concepts
- Quality learning activities to engage with the materials
- Cost—note some e-book publishers allow you to ‘cherry pick’ chapters to keep cost down
- Diversity—non-biased representations of multiple genders, races, ethnicities, cultures, etc. (Medel & Pournaghshband, 2017)
Digital Course Reserves
Digital Course Reserves are digital course materials which have been reserved by the UMass Amherst Library for use in a specific class. These include:
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- “Chunk It”
- Break your lecture into key concepts/topics and create lectures (live or recorded) of no more than 10 minutes
- Review your lecture slides/notes, and ask:
- Do I need to say all of this?
- Can students read or watch a video about some of it instead?
- Create a cycle of listening and doing
- After each ‘chunk’ of new material, give students an opportunity to participate in a learning activity: discussion, Q&A, debate, reflection, small-group assignment, practice examples/problems, etc.
- Use illustrations and real-life examples
- Concepts are better understood and ‘stick’ when applied to a real-life situation
- Illustrate concepts with actual images/videos and examples
- Be personable and use humor
- Be yourself and allow your personality (and some humor!) to shine through while you are lecturing
- It’s okay to make mistakes; your video lectures don’t need to be polished Hollywood productions
- Take a “less is more” approach on the slides
- Use minimal text on your presentation slides and enhance with photos, images, etc.
- Use simple, sans-serif fonts and contrasting colors, so your text is easily readable
A note on instructor notes
Instructors often have notes and slide decks that accompany their lectures. Providing copies of these supplemental notes to students is not only helpful to students with a documented disability—but also to all other students, especially those who are more visual learners or who could not attend the live lecture due to a variety of circumstances.
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- For live, synchronous lectures, Zoom is the platform commonly used.
- Schedule a Zoom meeting and practice Meeting With Your Class in Zoom
- For asynchronous lectures, you can use Echo360 or VoiceThread – which is a more interactive tool that allows for students to comment on and respond to the lecture with text, video, etc.
Open Education Resources
Open Educational Resources are educational materials and tools offered freely for anyone to use and—under some licenses—to re-mix, improve and redistribute. They include:
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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:
- Do I have a variety of instructional materials?
- Do my materials align with course learning objectives and assessments?
- How can I ‘chunk’ my lectures into shorter, topical 10 min segments?
- Are my slides too text-heavy? Can I adjust them to make them more captivating?
- Where and how can I incorporate OER and e-reserves?
- Are all of my materials accessible? Where and how do I need to make changes?
- Do I provide students with a chance to do and engage with new content as it’s presented?
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