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Best Practices

Best Practices

Level Up Your Online Teaching with Our Revised Professional Development Series

By Kyle Sky
September 18, 2024

We’re excited to announce the latest revision of our Level Up professional development series. Level Up consists of three professional development courses housed in Canvas:

  • Level Up 1 – Planning Your Online Course
  • Level Up 2 – Developing Your Online Course
  • Level Up 3 – Teaching Your Online Course

These courses have been designed to support you in developing a new course or revising an existing one. The OPLR instructional design and media teams have worked together to carefully update Level Up to reflect current best practices and provide an even more engaging and effective learning experience. Here are the top five improvements we’re most excited about.

1. Updated Learning Resources and Activities

We’ve refreshed our learning resources and activities to ensure they address the most current challenges in online learning design. You will find revised materials such as:

  • Selecting materials for equity, diversity, and inclusion
  • Creating effective media
  • Cultivating a sense of community

The Level Up content is more relevant than ever, helping you navigate the evolving landscape of online education with confidence.

2. Enhanced In-House Resources and Examples

We’ve significantly expanded our collection of in-house learning resources, reducing reliance on third-party materials. This includes:

3. More Faculty-Centered Media Content

We’ve incorporated more media content featuring you, our faculty partners! In these videos, experienced instructors share their personal experiences adapting to the online environment and offer practical advice for colleagues new to online teaching. Check out this great example from Brenda Tyczkowski on the benefits of backward design:

We hope this video inspires you and demonstrates the power of presenting information in many formats (such as a tipsheet and a complementary video).

 

4. Revised Milestones and Digital Badges


We’ve updated the assessments within the Level Up courses to reflect current best practices. The templates and job aids associated with the milestone assessments closely resemble the tools our instructional design team uses when working with faculty partners. And, as you submit milestones, you’ll receive individualized feedback from our instructional design team.

As an added incentive, faculty can earn digital badges by completing each training course. These badges are a tangible recognition of your commitment to professional development in online education.

5. Best Practices in Action

We’ve applied our own best practices in online course design to these training courses, with a strong focus on:

  • Alignment: Ensuring course objectives, content, and assessments work together seamlessly. Every Level Up activity supports your goal of enhancing your online teaching.
  • Engagement: Creating interactive and motivating learning experiences. We’ve incorporated tailored media content and numerous examples to keep you engaged and connected to the content.
  • Scaffolding: Providing structured support to help you build skills over time. As you work through the three Level Up courses, you will be carefully guided through the planning, course design, and teaching processes for online learning. Every milestone includes templates and job aids that can be reused in future course projects.

By experiencing these best practices firsthand as learners, you can gain a deeper understanding of their impact and be better equipped to implement them in your courses.

We’re so excited to share these changes with you! Months of effort from the OPLR team have gone into making Level Up the best that it can be. As you embark upon your next course development or revision, be sure to ask your instructional designer about how the Level Up courses can contribute to your project goals.

2024 Faculty Symposium Preview

By Abbie Amadio
May 2, 2024

Rebecca Glazier, PhD

Keynote Presentation by Dr. Rebecca Glazier

This year’s keynote speaker is Dr. Rebecca A. Glazier. A political science professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Dr. Glazier’s research interests span religion and politics, foreign policy, community engagement, the scholarship of teaching and learning, and more. Her book Connecting in the Online Classroom: Building Rapport between Teachers and Students (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021) details how simple, regular, and science-based rapport-building strategies can significantly improve student retention and success. In 2023, EdTech named Dr. Glazier one of the top higher-education influencers to follow, which highlights Dr. Glazier’s championing of technology to connect with students on a human level in the virtual classroom. In her keynote presentation, Dr. Glazier will share research-backed evidence demonstrating the impact that building rapport can have, how to build that rapport, and how to make meaningful connections with your online students.

Faculty Breakout Sessions

At this year’s symposium, you’ll have the opportunity to attend several breakout sessions led by UW faculty and experts in instructional design and media. Offered in various formats, the sessions will all focus on current best practices in online teaching and learning and offer practical strategies on everything from producing impactful lectures to cultivating personal resilience and preparing students to flourish in the age of AI. Get a glimpse of each breakout session below and see the full details on the UW Extended Campus 2024 Faculty Symposium website.

 

Coaching Students on How to Thrive in the Era of AI

Dee Piziak, UW-Milwaukee

💻 Presentation Gain insights into the far-reaching impact of AI on various industries and careers and how educators can equip their students with the tools they’ll need to succeed in an AI-driven world.

 

 

Creating Effective 15-Minute Narrated PowerPoint Lectures for Online Classes

John Bennett, UW-Parkside

💻 Presentation Learn a streamlined approach for crafting concise and impactful 15-minute narrated PowerPoint lectures that efficiently use publisher-provided resources, existing slides, and additional relevant course material to foster a more engaged and informed learning experience.

 

 

Aligning Curriculum with Changing Industry Needs

Kelli Stein, UW-Parkside, and Eileen Horn (Instructional Designer), UW Extended Campus

💻 Presentation Through the lens of revamping the UW Flexible Option’s Project Management certificate, you will explore strategies for effectively aligning curriculum with changing industry needs. Additionally, this presentation will cover identifying emerging industry trends and integrating them into course design, ensuring students are equipped with relevant and marketable skills in their field of study.

 

 

Strategies for Incorporating Labs into Online Science Courses

Laura Lee, UW-Stevens Point; Kristine Prahl, UW-Stevens Point; Jennifer Bray, UW-Stevens Point; and Kristine Pierick (Instructional Designer), UW Extended Campus

🎤 Panel Discussion Learn innovative strategies for delivering meaningful lab experiences in online science courses. You will also have the opportunity to brainstorm and share your own best practices for designing and teaching online lab courses.

 

 

Challenges and Opportunities in Online Asynchronous Group Learning

Pritosh Kumar, UW-Parkside, and Michelle Gabor, UW-Parkside

💻 Presentation Explore the best methods to create, manage, and monitor effective group assignments for both undergraduate and graduate online students. You will also discover new online tools for group learning and how to gauge success by evaluating metrics like participation, cohesion, and individual learning in a group setting.

 

 

Creating Effective Group Project Teams

Scott Dickmeyer, UW-La Crosse

✏️ Workshop Learn how to craft better work groups by identifying students’ individual managerial strengths and communication styles, ensuring a balanced and effective team environment. You will complete a hands-on activity where you’ll learn your own managerial strengths and communication styles, thereby experiencing the same dynamics as your students when grouped using this approach.

 

 

Teaching Communication in Degree Programs

Tim Krause, UW-Stevens Point, and Terry Tao (Instructional Designer), UW Extended Campus

💻 Presentation Discover effective strategies to inform students of the importance of clear communication in diverse technical professions, particularly when engaging with students who may question the need for strong communication skills in their respective fields.

 

 

Managing Capstone and Other Online Projects

Tim Krause, UW-Stevens Point; Michael Steury, UW-Stevens Point; and Kristin Kowal (Instructional Designer), UW Extended Campus

🎤 Panel Discussion Gain deeper insight into the challenges of guiding capstone students through applied projects in an entirely online, asynchronous setting. You will gain a deeper understanding of how to help students evaluate and select their projects and manage them throughout the semester using methods like Agile and scrum reporting via Google Sheets, interactive video demonstrations, and the Capstone database.

 

 

Practice Resilience by Inviting New Challenges: Activate Your “Bucket List”!

Theresa Dionne, UW-Stevens Point and UW-Madison

✏️ Workshop Learn how to cultivate resilience by designing a personalized “bucket list,” a strategy for increasing well-being and reducing the negative effects of stress often encountered in the demanding world of academia.

 

 

Driving Choice and Collaboration in Asynchronous Quantitative Environments

Lauren Mauel, UW-Green Bay

✏️ Workshop Discover innovative strategies to foster collaboration and empower student choice within asynchronous online courses, specifically looking at quantitative subject areas.

 

 

Open Topics Discussion

Ryan Anderson (Director of Instructional Design), Kyle Sky (Instructional Designer), Laurie Berry (Instructional Designer), Kristine Pierick (Instructional Designer), and the Media Team, UW Extended Campus

🎤 Open Discussion Join experts from the Instructional Design and Media Teams for an open discussion with your fellow online faculty members. In this engaging session, you will brainstorm with other attendees to select four main topics of discussion, ensuring a balanced conversation on each. The moderators will also review the resources available to faculty to assist with course development.

 

AI Roundtable Discussion

Nate Ewings (Instructional Designer) and Kelsey Zeller (Instructional Designer), UW Extended Campus

🎤 Open Discussion Join instructional designers leading the conversion about AI in online education for this roundtable discussion that will give you the opportunity to share with your colleagues how AI has impacted your teaching, how you’re using AI in your work, and how you are seeing students use it in your classroom.

 

See the full schedule and read more about the sessions and speakers on the UW Extended Campus 2024 Faculty Symposium website.

The UWEX Course Design Showcase is Live!

By Jessica O'Neel
September 14, 2023

If you have ever been working on your online course and thought to yourself:

“I feel like my discussions need a bit of variety.”

“I wish I could look at an example of someone else’s project rubric.”

“What exactly does it mean to ‘scaffold’ knowledge? Am I doing it right?”

You’re not alone! We often hear instructors talk about how they wish they could easily see examples of what others are doing in their courses. A group of our UWEX instructional designers has developed a way to give you a peek inside courses to see how your fellow instructors are implementing best practices in designing authentic assessments, creating instructor presence, and giving students effective feedback.

We are excited to unveil the UWEX Course Design Showcase website, featuring course examples from your peers!

The home page of the Course Design Showcase
The home page of the Course Design Showcase.

The site features numerous examples, which are organized into easy-to-find categories like:

  • Discussions
  • Rubrics
  • Scaffolding
  • Equity Diversity and Inclusion
  • Student Engagement
  • Community-Building Activities

And many more.

Clicking on one of these categories will take you to a page with examples from UWEX courses. Many of the examples feature testimonials from faculty and instructional designers highlighting their effectiveness and offering tips and suggestions for implementing them in your own courses. The focus is on the teaching strategy, which we hope will make it easy for you to adapt these examples to your course when you find something you like.

All of the examples on the site represent best practices in online learning. Members of our Instructional Design team nominated examples of successes worth replicating from faculty across our programs. Each submission was evaluated based on its use of research-supported, course-tested best practices and its ability to be implemented across content disciplines and delivery methods.

Here are some ideas of how you can use the Course Design Showcase:

  • Quickly find and implement new strategies and activities
  • Learn more about a best practice
  • Validate great course design and teaching practices you are already using

We hope you’re inspired by these examples to try something new in your course. Hopefully, the showcase will save you some time if you are looking to redesign assessments and add new ideas to your course. If you see something you want to try, reach out to your instructional designer!

We would love to hear your thoughts on the Course Design Showcase as well. This is a living, active site; additional examples and categories will be added every semester. Stay tuned for how you can be involved in future example submissions. Please reach out to Kristin Kowal with any questions or feedback about the site.

Jason Beier, Interim Associate Vice President of Online Learning for UW Extended Campus, sums it up best:

This site is possible because of incredible faculty partners like you. We want to express our sincere thanks for your invaluable expertise and the inspiring ways you bring best practices to life in your online courses. We hope that these examples both celebrate your work and spark new ideas in order to serve students through excellence in teaching and learning.

This site would not be possible without all the hard work and dedication from YOU! We truly appreciate the work you do for our students.

Faculty Spotlight: Dr. Erich Jauch

By Jessica O'Neel
May 8, 2023

Dr. Erich Jauch is a mathematics instructor at UW-Eau Claire. He currently teaches Algebra for Calculus for UW Independent Learning. He enjoys teaching introductory math courses and working with students at the beginning of their mathematical journey.

Dr. Erich Jauch, Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics, UW-Eau Claire
Dr. Erich Jauch, Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics, UW-Eau Claire

Recently, during a revision of Algebra for Calculus, Dr. Jauch added open educational resources to the course, removing the cost barrier of a textbook and online homework platform for students. He also added two types of activities to incorporate equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) principles and connect with his asynchronous, self-paced students. Moreover, the course is mindful of reducing math anxiety in students.

The first activity is a series of math chats. In every unit, students are given a space to ask or answer a question about the material covered or read and reflect on an article pertaining to a mathematical topic. Through the math chats, students are able to:
• Discuss diversity within the math community
• Highlight the work of underrepresented mathematicians
• See fun applications of math, like the “mathematically perfect” way to slice a pizza

✅ See an example of a math chat discussion

The second activity is a three-part math mystery. Students apply course concepts to a fictional story about an international criminal stealing precious artifacts. Before and after students solve problems related to the math mystery, they are asked to reflect in discussions:
• First, students discuss the concepts they might apply to the problem in an introductory discussion for each math mystery scenario.
• Second, after they’ve worked out the problem and seen the answer, students complete a reflection discussion on what they understood from the activity, what they struggled with, and how they might apply concepts in the future.

✅ See an example of an introductory discussion and a reflection discussion from the math mystery activity.

These discussions help reduce math anxiety and create equity by allowing students to see how others are thinking about and approaching the problems in the activity. The math mystery activities keep the focus on the learning process, not just the correct answer, by asking students to reflect on their solutions to the problems. In this spotlight, Dr. Jauch gives us more details about adding EDI to math courses and the benefits of these activities for students.

Often, math and science courses are perceived to be “difficult” to incorporate EDI principles into. What has helped you include more EDI in your courses?

While trying to source these principles from classic material is certainly more difficult, if we take the time to look we can find many opportunities to witness EDI topics in mathematics. Especially if we are willing to look into the applications of mathematics.

Can you give a brief description of how these strategies work in your course? Tell us what students are expected to do when they complete this activity. How are they evaluated and what kind of feedback do they get?

The math mysteries are a way for students to work through some problems that are interconnected and in a fun and playful way. Too often students are given math problems as busy work, so these were designed to be light-hearted but also an assessment of their abilities to that point in the class. Additionally, the types of problems were selected to best fit the written setting. The main process of the assignment is for students to first complete a pre-assessment of the topics and skills they may need for the assignment. Then they complete the worksheet by hand and upload their work to Canvas. Afterward, they are presented with partial answers and asked to reflect on the experience.

Can you talk a little more about developing and including these strategies in your course?

With the course being fully online, one benefit of the math chats is an opportunity for the students to interact with each other and see different perspectives about interesting current and EDI topics. This was important to me because student interactions are an important piece of a standard class and this brings it to an IL course. It was important however to not link the score [course grade] to the interactions as the number of students concurrently enrolled can vary greatly.

What advice would you have for other faculty who may want to try similar activities in their courses?

Be willing to look outside the normal topics covered in your course that are accessible to students. There are usually many modern topics that students have an interest in that you can make approachable to them.

Conclusion

Using OERs, adding opportunities to reflect and collaborate, and reducing student anxiety are effective ways to add more equity, diversity, and inclusion into a course. Our course reflection tool is also a helpful resource when considering EDI-related changes to your course. Reach out to your instructional designer if you want to learn more!

Common Accessibility Challenges Faced by Students and How We Can Help Fix Them

By Brian Chervitz
April 27, 2023

As part of serving the people of Wisconsin, UW Extended Campus strives to ensure every student, no matter what, can earn a high-quality and accessible postsecondary education. In service to this goal, the UWEX Instructional Design team and faculty work together to fix the common accessibility challenges faced by UW students. In fact, the UWEX ID team works hard to check our courses to address many potential accessibility issues before they ever become problematic. Checking images, HTML code, text, videos, language, links, and more is part of our process for every course.

What about your course announcements? We know things can change and you may need to share other learning resources or web links with your students in an announcement. While the ID team is available to lend a hand, we want you to feel confident in ensuring your announcements or other course updates are as accessible as the rest of the course.

In the video below, see how three common challenges might appear in a course announcement, and how they can be fixed using the accessibility tool already integrated into Canvas. The rest of this article reviews some challenges beyond those addressed in the video.

See the video on MS Stream.
Download the “Common Accessibility Challenges and How to Fix Them” infographic above or the accessible PDF to share with your students or colleagues.

Further Issues, Their Causes, and How We Fix Them

There are several other accessibility issues that the ID team addresses during the design of a course. Check out how we fix the issues below.

Issue: Students who are deaf or hard of hearing aren’t getting the key information from a video. 

The cause of this issue 

The video likely doesn’t have a transcription or closed captioning (or the captions are inaccurate). 

How we fix it 

If there is a video as a learning resource, we need to verify that the video has captions or a transcription. Resources made with UWEX Media Services automatically have both. To resolve a lack of captions or a transcript, we might reach out to the instructor to either make them or find a new video. 

Best practices 

To make videos as accessible as possible, we comply with following best practices: 

  • Captions are best for videos while transcriptions are best for audio-only resources. 
  • If using auto-generated captioning, rewatch the video to check that the captions line up with the audio, there are no critical errors, and fix likely mistakes, such as names or acronyms. 

For more information, visit the Transcripts page from the Web Accessibility Initiative as well as the Captions/Subtitles page from the Web Accessibility Initiative.

Issue: Students using assistive technology can’t distinguish links when searching through them. 

The cause(s) of this issue 

Screen readers will read all the text that is on the screen, including URLs, letter by letter (“h-t-t-p-colon-slash-slash-w-w-w-dot…”). Furthermore, screen readers can jump from link to link for easier navigation, but knowing the correct link to select can be a challenge if they all say, “Click here.” 

How we fix it 

We make each link on a page succinct, descriptive, and unique. Consider the differences between the following three examples: 

  1. Here is the website for the Web Accessibility Initiative: https://www.w3.org/WAI/fundamentals/accessibility-intro/.
  2. Click here to view the Web Accessibility Initiative website.
  3. The Web Accessibility Initiative website has plenty of resources to help you. 

The third example has the most accessible link because it is unique and concisely describes the link’s destination. 

Best practices 

For clear and accessible links, we comply with following best practices: 

  • Avoid phrases like “click here” or “read more.” Even if the student only reads the linked text, they should know exactly where the link takes them. 

Issue: Students using assistive technology have difficulty finding the information they need on the page. 

The cause(s) of this issue 

In addition to the challenges described in the video, there are a few other reasons a webpage can be inaccessible. One is an inefficient or clunky presentation of information. Just as an entirely written-out URL can disrupt the smooth reading of a paragraph or list, the use of a table to structure a page could prevent a logical interpretation of the page by assistive technology. 

How we fix it 

As mentioned above, w make sure links are succinct, descriptive, and unique. In addition, we check that tables are only used to present tabular data. If the situation demands a table to help us structure the page layout, we will change the HTML code to set the table to role=”presentation”, such as in the image below. 

In the image, the HTML code of a table is shown. In the table tag, the role attribute has been set to presentation.

Best practices 

To ensure the course’s pages present information undisrupted, we comply with following best practices: 

  • In the body of the text, write in short, clear sentences and paragraphs, and use list formatting as appropriate. 
  • When using tables to present data, include headers and a caption.