Support for Instructional Design
The Dept. of Online Learning helps faculty and academic programs design and revise online courses. Courses designed and revised with the help of Online Learning will promote best practices in instructional design. Courses will also adhere to the course design standards described in the Faculty Handbook for Online Education.
Online Learning can help in the following ways:
- Provide D2L training and troubleshooting support to instructors developing their own online courses.
- Connect instructors with scholarship about instructional design and best practices in online instruction.
- Explain PSC course design standards and provide strategies for meeting them.
- Convert instructional material and assignments from a face-to-face format into an online format.
- Identify opportunities for revising course design featues in an existing online course.
Examples of instructional design services Online Learning can provide include:
- Copy course content from a previous course or semester.
- Create modules and organize files into modules.
- Convert instructional materials (such as lecture notes) into content pages.
- Embed videos, images, files, and links into content pages.
- Create closed captionining and transcripts for videos.
- Convert paper-based assignments and exams into electronic assignments and exams on D2L.
- Add requirements for Respondus and Turnitin to new and existing assessments.
- Create exam review sessions.
- Setup dicussion forums and topics.
- Add or adjust due dates, access dates, and special access for assessments.
- Add course packs and external learning tools (such as Pearson or McGraw-Hill) to your D2L course.
- Setup the D2L Gradebook (categories and items).
- Connect assessments to the gradebook.
Contact the Department of Online Learning at onlinelearning@prairiestate.edu.
Instructional Materials
PDF Handouts
- Rubric for Asynchronous Contact Hours
- Verification of Student Identity in Distance Education
- Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking, and Technology (Universal
- Design for Distance Learning Programs)
- Taking IT Way Beyond Accessibility
- PowerPoint Presentation Alternatives
- How to use PowerPoint click here.
- How to record audio narration to your PowerPoint presentation click here.
- Click here to learn how to save your PowerPoint file as a video.
- Click here to learn how to add captioning to your lecture with YouTube.
Accessibility and Universal Design for Learning
To eliminate the barriers to accessibility and engagement, make the course materials accessible and consider implementing the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL). Below are resources to address accessibility and UDL.
- WebAim – Web Accessibility in Mind
- Microsoft Word, Make your Word Documents Accessible
- Microsoft Word, Tutorials on how to Create Accessible Documents in Word
- Microsoft Power Point, Tutorials on how to Create Accessible Slides in PowerPoint
- Web Aim, Make your PowerPoint Presentations Accessible
- The National Center on Disability and Access to Education, Cheatsheets to Create Accessible Video Content
- YouTube, Add your own Subtitles and Closed Captions
- Access DL, Center on Accessible Distance Learning
- CAST – About Universal Design for Learning
- D2L’s Brightspace Blog about Universal Design for Learning.
- The eLearning Coach.
- The Illinois Online Network.