Best Practices for Emergency Remote Teaching

Design

Course design, arguably, has the potential to make or break the educational experience, in that poorly designed online courses often create more frustration than learning. The effective design of online courses involves the assignment of a subject matter expert and an instructional designer and is a rigorous and extended process that requires collaboration, discussion, and revision. Throughout the process of online course design, factors such as engagement, alignment, instructional level, and workload are considered, and the optimal result is a well-organized and engaging presentation of content, including aligned resources, activities, and assessments, which represent an instructional level that is consistent with the program through which the course will be offered (Baldwin et al., 2018). As referenced above, emergency remote teaching differs significantly from online education in important ways, but many of the best practices for online course design may be applied to the design of emergency remote teaching (Hodges et al., 2020; Rahim, 2020). One best practice for the design of online courses is to include an instructional designer (Outlaw & Rice, 2015; Stevens, 2013). The collaboration achieved by this strategy allows for a comprehensive review and evaluation of the content, as well as its presentation. Additionally, collaborative course design contributes to improved course quality (Chao et al., 2010). Further, instructional designers may advise subject matter experts regarding technology tools (Bennett et al., 2015), the use of which represents an additional best practice. The inclusion of technology tools is a best practice for online course design because it promotes student engagement with content. Additionally, it can increase student-student engagement and student-faculty engagement by providing platforms for communication. A third best practice for online course design is the use of evaluation models to assess online course structure (Baldwin et al., 2018). Models may be developed within institutions or by outside organizations. These models provide a framework which may be used to assess various facets of online courses, such as alignment, resource relevance, workload, and active learning. A fourth best practice for online course design is to incorporate active learning elements (Koohang et al., 2016), which is associated with positive student perceptions (Fayer, 2014).