Vickie Maris | Online Course Design, Digital Content Strategy and a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt

Five Tips For Course Designers

2015-04-14 by Vickie Maris Leave a Comment

A question I hear often about online course design is, “Where should I start?” In fact, that question was in my email inbox this morning – asked by a manufacturing expert who has been teaching an on-campus course in a university. His course is captured as video and made available to online learners, so he’d like to improve his course design to better connect with his distance learners.

If you too are teaching students in a traditional classroom, while also teaching online learners, you’ll find that the steps you take to engage your online learners will often improve the engagement among your on-campus students too.

Here are five tips for improving the design of your online course and building engagement with your students:

1 – Seek input from an instructional designer on staff with the organization for which you are teaching. If you are teaching through a department that doesn’t have an instructional designer on staff, you will likely find that the department can connect you with instructional designers who work for departments that provide services across the university or school system.

Here are a few of my favorite university web resources designed to help instructors create awesome courses!

University of Central Florida Karen L. Smith Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning

Purdue University – The Center for Instructional Excellence

Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning – Indiana University

2 – Take an online course in a subject you’d like to learn. That is one of THE best things you can do to become a better course designer. Experience courses that others have designed. You might end up taking a course that was poorly designed (or not designed), but you can learn from those experiences.

I make it a habit to always be in an online course. I admit, I’m a bit of a fanatical lifelong learner, and online courses are a way for me to feed the habit! But it’s also a great way to get ideas for your own course.

3 – Take an online course about creating an online course. Yes, this tip is fairly similar to Tip 2, but I want to encourage you to take courses about course design. I just completed an online course titled, How to Create an Awesome Online Course, by Miguel Hernandez, offered through Udemy. The course is not only full of useful how-to lecture videos, but you’ll find Miguel to be pretty entertaining. I love how he talks right to the camera with lots of energy and enthusiasm about his topic. That skill alone will help you engage your learners in a much better way – no matter what subject you are teaching.

Screenshot of email about Udemy course completion — This is a screenshot of an email I received after completing an online course in Udemy, How To Create an Awesome Online Course, by Miguel Hernandez.

To check out what is available at Udemy, you can click the button logo below (which is my affiliate link to Udemy).

4 – Ask your students about the ways they prefer to consume content in an online learning environment. Today’s learners, whether they are children, teenagers, college students or adults, usually have experiences from other online courses that they can share. I’m always asking students what types of online learning activities they engage in the best or find the most useful. And then I ask them what they would do differently if they were creating the course on their own. Before you start designing, ask questions of your target audience. Do a short, online survey. Ask friends and family about their online learning experiences.

My 9-year-old nephew told me the other day that he really likes his elearning days because he can learn at his own pace (my words). But he also told me that he did a whole week’s worth of modules on his first elearning day. I asked him if he was really in to the subject and wanted to work ahead, and he said, “I like the subject, but I thought that was how many we were supposed to do.”

It turns out that his teacher had released a week’s worth of modules to the students rather than the one module intended for the day. It’s good to be familiar with the settings in your online learning management system, so that you don’t accidentally overwhelm your students! If you make a mistake, and we all do, just be sure to communicate the correction as soon as you are aware you’ve made an error. Students know you’re human. They’ll cut you slack!

5- Ask a colleague or friend who has had success as an online course designer. This might be someone who teaches online or it might be someone whose profession is to design courses. You’ll also find people like me who love to do both. Someone who’s been living in the online course world for a while, will be able to advise you on design models, communication tools, ways to create assignments and assessments that can be graded by your online learning management system, and many other helpful hints.

BONUS TIP! – If you’ve created a course and would like to test it out with a small group of students, offer a beta version of the course at half-price and let students know that they will be asked to provide specific feedback along the way as they take the course. You can use the feedback to tweak your content, pacing of material or delivery format.

Since “beta” is a term from the software development community, I’ve started leaning towards using phrases that I’ve heard from Dane Maxwell of www.thefoundation.com who suggested the terms: “Early Access” or “Champion Users,” during an interview in Session 149 of the Pat Flynn podcast, www.smartpassiveincome.com.

Become a Course Champion

I’m testing this concept out by inviting learners to be “Course Champions” of a new course I’m completing, “World War 2 History: A View of the USA Home Front.” I’m offering the course at half price through May 31, 2015, for anyone who would like to be part of my test group and provide feedback about the content. You can be one of my Course Champions.

I’m going to limit the size of the group to 50, so if you’re interested, please go ahead and get registered even as I’m completing the upload of the materials and videos. I’ll send out an announcement when everything is complete, but you’re welcome to list questions and comments in the course prior to all of the materials being uploaded.

To Register: https://www.kajabinext.com/marketplace/courses/2314-world-war-2-history-a-view-of-the-usa-home-front

Background on the Course, World War 2 History: A View of the USA Home Front

For this course, I interviewed my 92-year-old mom, Lucille Maris, about her experiences as a young bride while my dad, Jim, was in flight training and then in combat flying B-24 bombers out of England. My hope is that my mom and I can create an FAQ video lesson to add to the course that addresses the questions you ask as Course Champions. That is the primary reason I’ve opened the course even prior to all of the content being uploaded. The videos and many digitized photos like the ones you see here, along with letters, receipts, telegrams and other memorabilia are being uploaded daily over the next few weeks.

Photo of page 1 of a 1943 letter from a mom to a son fighting in World War 2. — This is page 1 of a letter my grandmother, Lizzie Maris, wrote to my dad, Jim Maris, upon news of his wedding to my mom. You can read the rest of the letter within the course.

I’ll do another blog post in the future to let you know the results of how that worked out. If you’d like to be one of my Course Champions in this course, I’d be delighted to have you come along for the experience. We can learn together!

To Register: https://www.kajabinext.com/marketplace/courses/2314-world-war-2-history-a-view-of-the-usa-home-front

Is it Right to Meerkat a Funeral? Or a Classroom Lecture?

2015-04-06 by Vickie Maris Leave a Comment

Is it right to “Meerkat” a funeral service? Yes, I used Meerkat as a verb. A friend asked me how to live stream a family member’s funeral service so that family and friends who were not able to attend in person could be there via the stream. Meerkat has been a top-of-mind social media platform for me lately, so it immediately came to mind as a possible solution for sharing the live stream of the service. But let me put the question to you! Should he use the Meerkat app on his phone to stream the funeral service to his Twitter followers?

That question begs another, “How many of his family members and friends would be following him on Twitter and would know how to download the app and click in to the live stream?” The answer would be “not many” if it were my own family. So far, I’m the only one besides my hubby, Scott Greeson, @scottgreeson2, in my immediate family who uses Twitter. A couple of my family members have accounts but they aren’t active.

Does Meerkat work on iOS and Android?

Another point to note is that the app only works for streaming from iOS devices currently. There is an app for watching Meerkat streams from other devices, but if you want to host a live stream with Meerkat, you need to be on an iOS device. You would also want to be aware of your data usage while streaming. Live streaming is a data hog.

Where were you when you first learned about Meerkat?

Meerkat started rearing it’s Meerkat head around me this spring, and then I saw it used by Guy Kawasaki (@guykawasaki) during Social Media Marketing World 2015 in San Diego, Calif. He asked a friend to Meerkat his presentation in a concurrent session.

Meerkat is promoted as a service that you use to catch something being shared by a Meerkat user live as it’s happening. If you stream an event with Meerkat, it will immediately post a link along with your event description in your Twitter feed for your Twitter followers to see. If you follow the link in Twitter that is provided for the stream after an event has ended, you get a message, “Stream Over.” When you start a new stream, Meerkat will also send a notice to anyone following you in the Meerkat app.

What are people streaming in Meerkat?

Keyword searches in the Meerkat app will take you to about anything you might like to view from someone feeding their cat to a professor delivering a lecture to your favorite comedian interviewing people in a bar. I haven’t searched on “funeral service” yet, so I’m going to put down this blog post and go check that out.

Results: No. I didn’t find anything under the search “funeral service” or “funeral.” I did find a live stream of a guy named Mitchell who is streaming his drive to Chicago at the time of this writing. There are 29 people on his stream watching his drive and asking him questions via the chat feature. He comments live, “I’m just streaming for the hell of it.” He apparently has his iPhone in a holder on his dashboard. It scares me to report that he’s also eating a sandwich while reading the questions from his followers that appear at the bottom of the video frame. The quality of the video is pretty amazing on my iPhone 6 Plus, but the stream is cutting in and out. I’m getting a message on the app, “Stream will resume once connection strengthens.”

If you’re thinking about posting a question or comment to someone doing a live stream in Meerkat, keep in mind that your post will appear as a tweet in your Twitter feed. If you’re the one doing the live streaming in Meerkat, let me suggest that you not do so while operating a motor vehicle!

Question: Can I record my Meerkat stream?

I recently watched a Meerkat stream that had been recorded as video and placed on Youtube, so obviously, there is a way to catch a stream for eternity. I was curious about how the Meerkat stream had been recorded, so I went back to the tweet containing the link I had followed to the YouTube video. I found the #katch hashtag had been used. That is a service that can be used by your followers to request a video capture of your Meerkat live stream. It then provides you with a YouTube URL to provide to your following so that they can see the recording of the stream long after the event has taken place. You, as the creator of the Meerkat, would get a tweet about the video recording request that you can approve or deny.

If you know right at the outset that you would like to have the live stream captured as a video and placed on YouTube, you can put the #katch hashtag in your stream description in Meerkat. At the time of this writing, the YouTube videos of Meerkat streams that were caught by #katch are unlisted so you wouldn’t find them on random strolls through YouTube. I wonder if that will change in the future?

I tried this feature when doing a live stream of an instructor giving out homework assignment instructions. I included the #katch hashtag in my stream description, and sure enough, a YouTube video (unlisted) was created and the link was provided to me. I put the link to the YouTube video in the online course management system, so the students could easily refer to the instructions given in class.

What are your thoughts about Meerkat streams being recorded and put on YouTube? It does take away the sense of urgency for getting on the stream while the event is taking place. Note: You can save your stream to your device by tapping a button in the app at the end of your stream.

Traditional Video Recording vs. Meerkat or Live Streaming

Live streaming an event with Meerkat, or one of its competitors such as Twitter’s Periscope, is a different approach to sharing content than formally recording an event, doing edits to the recording and making a file available. You also aren’t hindered by the six-second limit of Vine videos in Twitter or the 15-second limit of videos in Instagram. In Meerkat, you can stream as long as you’d like, or for however long followers are willing to watch you!

Here are a few of the differences between traditional video production and live streaming:

Video Recording in the Traditional Way	Live Streaming With Meerkat
Involves planning such as storyboarding	Involves very little planning unless you want to schedule and promote a live stream
Involves thought-out recording equipment and lighting	Involves taking out your phone, opening an app like Meerkat and pushing the stream button
Involves editing and post production	Does not permit editing or post production
Involves uploading of large files to a host site	Followers just watch your stream via the app and don’t need to access stored files
Viewers are not actively engaged with the host during the recording	Viewers can type questions or comments to be addressed by the host during the live stream
Video files can be made accessible indefinitely	Live stream video is not available once the event is over and the stream ends (Unless the #katch hashtag is used in the stream description which sends the stream to a YouTube video file. See www.twitter.com/katchkats or @katchkats on Twitter for more detail.)

Can You Use Meerkat in Education?

Let me bring this back to thoughts on the educational use of a live stream. Instructors can do a live stream with Meerkat of their lecture and give distance students opportunity to be “in the classroom.” From an audio standpoint, you would want to be close enough to your phone for it to pick up your voice. If a student asks a question, I would recommend repeating the question so that the people on your feed could hear what is being asked. But I have to say I was amazed at the ability of my iPhone 6 Plus to pick up voices of students in a classroom who were 20 or more feet away from my device when they were speaking. I don’t mean for this to sound like an iPhone 6 Plus commercial. It’s simply my only point of reference for these tests.

You could assure your audio quality and have more freedom to move about your classroom if you used a lavalier mic that had a phone connection. Here is just one example of a lavalier mic that would work for this purpose. This is the Rode Smartlav available through Amazon. (the graphic below is an affiliate link)
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College students responses to questions about Meerkat

When I asked a group of graduate students if they had seen a Meerkat stream, none of them were familiar with it yet. The question was posed on April 3, 2015. I predict that responses will be different in another month or two.

The point they immediately brought up was a concern about intellectual property being streamed. Hmm. What are your thoughts on that one? I don’t think that intellectual property should be broadcast in a classroom unless students or other listeners have signed a non-disclosure agreement before attending the session. In that case, maybe the lecturer should also ask that phones and other mobile recording devices should be either turned off or turned in for safe storage before the lecture begins. I can’t imagine that going over very well.

I see a lot of potential for educational uses of Meerkat for live streaming of how-to video; for live streaming a help session before an exam; for better connecting with online students. The possibilities seem endless to this instructional designer!

I’m really curious about your thoughts on some of the ideas and questions I’ve posted in this article. Livestreaming of funerals. Livestreaming of classroom lectures. Capturing livestreaming as video on YouTube. So many topics to discuss! And believe me, I don’t claim to have the answers. But I’d sure enjoy chatting about the subject with you. Please add your comment below!

Breaking Course Design and Planning Rules With an Online Course on World War 2 History

2015-03-31 by Vickie Maris Leave a Comment

Photo of Lucille Maris on a boat in 1945 — My mom, Lucille Maris, pictured here on a boat in Miami, Florida, in 1945 while she and my dad, James R. Maris, were on R & R after his combat tour of duty in B-24 bombers that he flew out of England during World War 2.

Do you ever have one of those projects that just stops you in your tracks? You put everything else aside to work on this one thing that you’re just crazy passionate about! That’s where I am with creating an online course about World War 2 history that tells a story of the USA home front. The reason for my passion? My mom, Lucille Maris, is my content expert for the course.

I’ve designed, developed and marketed many online courses and learning opportunities throughout my career as an instructional designer, but this one definitely tugs at my heart strings. I feel as though if it won’t matter if the only goal I accomplish is to have archived these historical materials in a place where my nieces, nephews, other family members and friends can access it. I’m not sweating about a marketing plan, enrollment numbers or other topics like these that you would typically have in your goals related to launch of a new course.

More often, I would be advising that you should:

1) Test out the market to see if people are interested in the materials you are about to compile into an online course. Do they have a problem that taking the course would solve?;

2) Consider a beta test of the material;

3) Put a marketing plan together to promote the availability of your course;

4) … and many more standard items on the to-do list of course development and marketing.

But for this one, I simply wanted to forge ahead and capture the content while my mom, 93, is available to share her wisdom. We have had such fun working together on the content; combing through scrapbooks, old letters, telegrams, military mission maps my dad used as a pilot of a B-24 bomber, receipts from the company in London that shipped his Cocker Spaniel, Blondie, home from the war and a host of many memories.

Mom has been reliving for me, the stressful times of war. She has shared the stress of being a newly-married young woman and not knowing the fate of her spouse for weeks at a time as he flew combat in another country. She recounts the challenges of trying to find housing when it was tough to even find a room to rent in someone’s house, or the difficulties of purchasing food with the rationing stamps provided to Americans during World War 2 (WWII).

I will be sharing more technical articles about online course design and elearning tips on this blog in the future, but with this post, I hope to have instilled the notion that it’s OK to take time out and design a course, write a book, conduct an interview – do something to create content in a topic you are passionate about. Give yourself permission to go off routine and get the creative juices flowing again if you’re feeling stalled.

Taking an Online Course

You can also find that taking, rather than creating, an online course in a topic you have lots of interest in or passion about can provide the same results.

So whether you’re thinking about designing a course or taking a course, find a topic that’s of interest – one that you can really sink your teeth into – and get going.

If you’d like to view this documentary-style course (about 2 hours of video), it is live in the Udemy platform. Here is a link for enrolling in the course at a discounted price of $19: Aviator’s Wife Tells of Home Front Life During World War 2.

You can watch the videos and view the files from just about any type of device – laptop to tablet to mobile phone. Please add your comments below and let me know what type of course you plan to create!