CHSS Online Teaching Initiative

Organizing Course Content

Assigning Reading Materials

For supplemental reading materials, such as external websites or pdfs, place the files or links in a separate folder and sort them by units or learning modules so that students can find them easily. The file size should be no more than 15MB per download. Otherwise, it will take students too much time to download files. Consider using the scanning services available through the library. They ensure the highest quality of all scanned materials.

Using Discussion Boards

To promote collaboration, create discussion threads for students to post questions about major assignments and projects in the course. Having separate discussion threads for each major assignment will make it possible to sort through a large number of questions. For peer reviews, create separate threads for different assignments so that students know where to post drafts and reviews.

Weekly discussion posts can be an effective way to promote learning and establish communication with and among students. At the same time, reading, responding to, and grading posts can take a lot of time and effort (Eaton 39). Thus, before assigning discussion posts, decide which learning outcome the posts will address, what role they will play in the final grade calculation, how they will be graded, and how much instructor feedback will be provided. To maximize learning, consider explaining specific content requirements in the discussion prompt, including the types of evidence students must present, any specific course materials that students need to use, the number of posts they have to respond to, and a word count.