Converting Face-to-Face Courses to Blended/Online Learning Experiences

Step 1: Your Skills, Learners, and Context 

When starting to convert your course to the online space, you should identify your comfort level with teaching online. If this is new for you, consider partnering with your EDI team to assist you with your Course Design by signing up for a Consultation Session. If you have experience, we encourage you to consider this method as you begin to increase the content you have available online. 

In your analysis, you should identify:

• Who are your learners?
• How many students are typically enrolled?
• What are their needs and expectations from the course? 
• What is the purpose of the course within the larger program? 

Step 2: Reviewing Your Syllabus and Existing Content 

It is important to re-read your syllabus to identify the critical aspects of the course such as the goals, course materials, and assessments. Pull out the program, course, and weekly learning objectives throughout the course.

Implement the “Marie-Kondo Your Course” (Dunlap & Bjelica, 2022) approach. Marie-Kondo has created a method of de-cluttering your home so that you can live comfortably in the space. This happens by removing items that do not “Spark Joy” in the home. Her method involves:

• Cleaning Out the Space Completely
• Focus on Categories of Belonging Instead of Rooms
• Choose Only Those Belongings that Spark Joy
• Keep Nostalgia at Bay
• Care for and Respect your Belongings. 

We can apply a similar approach to your course design process, especially if you need to change your 16-week course to an 8-week course. This design process is an easy way to see what you already have, break up larger projects, use shorter and more frequent formative assessments, and provide room for more active learning activities.  

Step 1: Clear Out the Space Completely 

Courses can easily become overfilled with content, materials, and resources as the course gets older. While everything may be relevant, there may be too much or it may be outdated. Prepare to shuffle things around in the course! Just because an assignment is due in Week 5, does not mean it has to stay in week 5 or cannot be adapted to fit another topic. Challenge yourself to take a deep look at what you have and use a critical eye as you move forward in the process.  

Step 2: Focus on Categories of Belonging Instead of Rooms

In your on-ground course, you may have a “Weekly Module” theme that may inform your content and activities for that week. In your redesign instead of thinking in terms of weekly topics, think about the course in terms of “Course objectives”. 

Take the readings, materials, and course activities and sort them into “piles” by Course Objective. You can organize your piles in a table, venn diagram, concept map, or other visuals. These piles can help you see how much emphasis you place on which objectives and how many resources and activities you have relating to each. With these piles, it may better show you where you may need to add or take-away from. 

Step 3: Choose Only Those Belongings that Spark Joy 

Marie-Knodo encourages us to cherish the things we discard, which allows us to let it go and focus on the value of the things that we keep. Walk away from your piles, come back with fresh eyes, and give each item your full consideration by answering:

• Does this item add value?
• Does the assignment feel like busy work? 
• Does the activity enhance the learning experience? 
• Is the item impactful for skill development or understanding? 
• Does this overlap with another assignment or material in the course? 
• Is this aligned to the course goals and learning objectives? 
• Does this relate to a real-world task that a professional would be asked to accomplish? 

Step 4: Keep Feelings of Nostalgia at Bay 

We know that some resources, content, activities, and assignments can be difficult to set aside as they used to serve a purpose in the course or the students produced strong work. However, if they don’t serve a clear purpose in the course and if the learning objectives have changed over time, these resources may need to be realigned or removed. 

Step 5: Care for and Respect Your Belongings 

After you have cleared out your piles, it is time to put everything back together. You will need to (1) determine the delivery format of each assignment (i.e. face-to-face v.s. online) and (2) organize your items to create a pathway for mastery. 

1. Some assignments will benefit from remaining face-to-face, and some may benefit from online. To determine the most appropriate approach, consider using the flipped classroom method. In this method, the learning materials are shared out with students at the beginning of the week. Then, they can come together face-to-face to attend a lecture, work on a group project, or have detailed discussions on the materials that have been shared. Afterwards, the students can return to the LMS to submit an assignment. The assignment can be one that challenges them to develop their skills/knowledge or a reflection.

1. When organizing your course, ensure your course is scaffolded and builds skills/knowledge over the course of the term. Each week should continue to challenge students in new ways to help them achieve their course and professional goals. Visit these pages to learn more…

For just starting with the LMS, we recommend putting your syllabus online as well as releasing your grades online. 

For more advanced users, challenge yourself to try out a new feature! Please visit the following pages for some ideas:

• Structure and pace your courses with modules
• Move your assignment prompts and submission collection online
• Let students engage with one another outside of class in course discussion boards
• Reach out to students outside of class with updates via the announcements tool
• Fill out your Canvas profile to introduce yourself to students
• Deploy the quizzes tool to create objective assessments, ungraded information gathering activities, surveys, etc.
• Share your insights with students by writing your own pages
• Keep your syllabus current and authoritative while negating document version confusion by making the most of Canvas’ syllabus page.
• Standardize your grading and communicate activity expectations with rubrics
• Start the process of identifying plagiarized assignment submissions with TurnItIn
• Free up class time for discussion by recording some standard lecture sections in Panopto

This is your first run of the course now that you have redesigned it, make sure to take notes throughout the experience on students reactions and learning. Also, make sure to take note of how the discussions went, and if there is anything that should be improved for next time. Try responding to these questions to see how it went:

• Was there any content that was particularly challenging? Why? 
• What was essential that the students engaged with? 
• Were the student needs and expectations you identified in your analysis remain true? If not, what did you learn? 
• What opportunities were available for students to build community with their peers? 
• Did the students enjoy the delivery approach you took? 
• What were students’ reactions to the assignments?

Analyze all the data you collected during the first run of the course. Try meeting with other instructors who may have taught the same course this term and see how the course went for them. Consider asking:

• What assignments did they change? 
• What discussions did they improve? 
• Were there any assignments that worked well on-ground? Virtually? Should any be flipped? 
• Was there any new research that came out during this time? 

After you have these conversations, you can move into the revision phase.