This semester has been unusually focused for me. Like many of you, I suspect, I typically wear a lot of hats at work: teacher, technologist, trainer, liaison (to multiple subjects), reference librarian, library committee member, university committee member, etc etc etc. This semester I have a lot of hats, but one is significantly bigger than the rest. And that hat is developing our first ever online information literacy course. It’s a major project, in part because online learning is also mostly new at our larger institution. I want to be absolutely sure that this course is well designed and that the students are getting a top-notch education that matches or exceeds what they’re getting in face-to-face classes.
I’m starting to get requests from people at my own institution and librarians at other places about what the course looks like, so I’m writing this post to have something to point to.
First up: here’s a presentation I gave the other day on the course.
The presentation walks through what led up to the course, what we cover, the planning process, the course layout, the technology choices, student reception, and lessons learned.
Anytime I am interested in talking about any of these specifics, and in fact might do so in this venue. But what I’m hearing the most is an interest in what the course looks like. I’ve locked it down to the WFU community to protect student privacy, so I’ve taken a few screenshots to show what it actually looks like.
This is the course homepage. You can see that it gives an introduction to the site, information on how to contact me and communicate, and the course Learning Objectives. It’s harder to see, but I’ve also embedded a Google Calendar with course due dates, material release dates, and office hours. The box to the right is the chat interface that connects to Meebo (and sometimes suggests finding me on Google+ in a hangout) and below the fold is a list of the most recent announcements. You can see that the sidebar includes basic information about the course, announcements, the calendar, assignment information, and the course units.
This is the introduction to a specific unit. You can see that each unit leads in with a paragraph introducing the topic and tying it into what was covered before. Next, I list the learning outcomes for the unit and the things a student has to have completed to have finished the section. I follow up with a video introduction explaining what the topic is about in about 1-3 minutes.
The second half of the introduction is a short survey to give me a sense of where students are (or in this case, where they think they are). This is helpful in letting me know what to expect in general in the responses as well as gives me a sense of what to include when I email students feedback.
Below the survey is a list of links that point to the actual content of the unit. This varies between three and four for the most part.
The actual unit looks something like this:
Most include text, videos, screencasts, text-based slide decks, images, or some combination of the above. Each page typically includes a question or discussion forum about something covered on the page. This allows me to make sure everyone actually goes through the content on each page.
Finally, each unit ends with something like this. This tells them to make sure they completed everything, how this unit fits with the next one. It also highlights homework assignment due dates.
There are two types of work in this class: classwork that shows me you’re participating (the equivalent of participation in class and/or class worksheets) and homework assignments. The classwork is something each student does on their own personal page (see the links to them in the image above). They answer the class questions and record a video synthesizing the class. This video is extremely helpful for me. It allows me to get a sense of how much they really got it, who they are as people, and how interested they are. I think they don’t understand how the video fits in for their learning, so I need to do a better job of letting them know how important I find them to be. I don’t think they’d stand alone without the text answers, either, as students frequently refer to the text in their videos.
The homework assignments vary from reflective essays to assignments built around finding specific resources. They have just as much as an in personal class. The final project is an annotated bibliography (something I haven’t done in my face-to-face information literacy classes in years, but seemed like a good foundational assignment for an entirely new environment).
Students get at least two emails from me a week: one on their daily participation work and one on their homework assignments. They get more than two if they’re falling behind. I meet with anyone who wants to meet as often as they do. In reality, these students are getting a much more personalized and focused education than students in my traditional class.
This has been an intense semester (and we still have weeks to go!) but it’s a really really good experience. Based on the coursework, I see learning taking place, and I know a lot of these students better than I know some of the most talkative students in my face-to-face. It’s been a lot of by-the-seat-of-my-pants work, but fun. I’m also looking forward to having time to try on my other hats again. 
