Welcome back to The Deep Dive. Today we're looking
at what you could call the ultimate educational
pressure test. How do you launch a high quality
online course and do it fast? In the tech world
they call it spinning up. Right. And the challenge
is... Well, it's very real. Educators often get
really short lead times. Maybe it's poor planning
at the institutional level or a last minute enrollment
spike. Or, you know, a global event like we all
saw back in 2020. Exactly. And that parallel
between IT and what instructors have to do, it's
actually perfect. An IT tech spins up a server,
they take it from being plugged in to being actually
usable. Okay. For a course, the student information
system does the first part. It creates the course
shell, adds the students, assigns the teacher.
So it's operable. You can log in. It's operable.
But your mission as the teacher is to take it
from that state just operable to being truly
functional, a place where students can actually
learn something. And our mission for you, the
listener, is to pull out the key principles for
doing that, not just efficiently, but with high
quality. Exactly. And our source materials point
to five core design standards that a course has
to meet, especially when it's spun up fast. And
these apply across the board, right? Fully online,
hybrid. Yep, all of it. So first, it has to be
intuitive, easy for students to use. Second,
the content needs to be aligned, so your assignments
have to reflect your objectives. Third, there
have to be opportunities for real interaction,
for active learning. Fourth, you, the instructor,
need a clear plan for how you'll be present in
the course. And fifth, it needs clear links to
support systems. So let's start with that first
one, ease of use. This isn't just a nice -to
-have, is it? It feels fundamental. Oh, it's
absolutely fundamental. It all comes down to
perception and perceived effort. What do you
mean? Well, an instructor might think their course
is simple, but if a student is spending 30 minutes
just trying to figure out where to submit an
assignment, the system has failed. The design
has to be intuitive for the student, not just
the person who built it. That's it. And the reason
this matters so much is explained by something
called cognitive load theory. Right, the idea
that our brains only have so much bandwidth at
any given moment. It's a zero -sum game. It is.
And that mental bandwidth gets divided into three
kinds of load. The first is intrinsic cognitive
load. So that's just the effort needed to understand
the material itself, the inherent difficulty.
Precisely. If the topic is complex, the load
is high. You can manage it by, say, raking a
big task into smaller steps. OK. And the second
one? That's the germine cognitive load. This
is the good stuff. It's the mental capacity that's
left over for your students to actually build
new understanding, to make connections. It's
the whole goal. And its enemy is the third type.
Its enemy is extraneous cognitive load. This
is all the bandwidth that gets wasted. Wasted
on a confusing interface, unclear directions,
poorly formatted text. So the mental energy spent
just trying to find the right syllabus link is
literally stolen from the energy they could have
used to understand the material in the syllabus.
You've got it. So the design principle is incredibly
practical. You have to aggressively reduce that
extraneous load, clear the pathway, because when
you do that, you leave more room for the germane
load. It's a performance multiplier for learning.
All right. Let's move from the theory to some
really actionable strategies. How do you create
that friction -free experience when you have
to launch a course tomorrow? The sources are
really clear on this. You start with structural
consistency. How you organize the content itself.
Right. And in that pressure cooker of a rapid
launch, you have to make these big structural
decisions right away. Take navigation. If your
learning management system allows for it, use
collapsed content sections. So students don't
have to do that endless scroll to find this week's
work. Exactly. We all know that feeling of scrolling
on our phones, just browsing. But it's a totally
different kind of frustration when you're scrolling
to find one specific link in a sea of 40 other
things. It kills your focus. It destroys any
sense of where you are in the course. It does.
But if week one is visible and weeks two through
15 are collapsed, The current work is always
right there, front and center, minimal wasted
effort. And the content inside those chunks,
those weeks or modules, has to be consistent
too. Every single time. Whether you organize
by week or by topic, the order has to be predictable.
The sources recommend objectives first, then
resources, then interactive activities, and finally,
your assessment activities. Same labels, same
visual cues. every single time. You should create
a template chunk on day one. It saves you hours
later and it guarantees that consistency for
your students. Which leads right into naming
conventions. The power of a good name. Oh, it's
huge. Use fewer names for things and make sure
those names are identical everywhere. In the
syllabus, in the online course, and what you
say in class. The sources also recommend using
action -oriented labels. Can you give an example
of that? Sure. So instead of a static title like
objectives, you could frame it as what we will
master this week. Ah, I see. Instead of just
discussions, try interact with your classmates
here. You're actually guiding their behavior
with the label. That's smart. And enumerate everything.
Don't just say week three. Call it three. Graphing
linear equations. And definitely, definitely
enumerate your announcements. Why is that so
important? Because if you send out announcement
hashtag 12, a student can email you and say,
I have a question about announcement number 12.
It cuts down on that chaotic back -and -forth
email chain trying to figure out what they're
even talking about. That makes a lot of sense.
So reducing friction also means making sure every
file works for every student every time. Universal
file formats are non -negotiable here. For any
static material, so things that would otherwise
be a paper handout. A syllabus. A reading. Right.
The recommendation is simple. Convert it to a
PDF, portable document format. Everyone can open
a PDF. And it preserves your formatting. But
what if a student needs to edit the file, like
a worksheet? Good question. You could save it
as a rich text format. That's a fallback. But
really, the best solution now is to use a cloud
suite, like Google or Microsoft 365. You just
link to the file, and the student can click it
to create their own editable copy. Zero friction.
No downloading weird software. Exactly. And for
video, which can be the biggest source of extraneous
load, the best practice is to upload your MP4
file to YouTube as an unlisted video. Why unlisted?
And why YouTube instead of hosting it yourself?
Two big reasons. First, bandwidth. Hosting video
on your own institution's server can lead to
buffering and bad playback. That's frustrating.
Second, and this is key, is distraction. When
you embed an unlisted YouTube link, you prevent
the distraction trifecta. No ads, no random comments,
and no algorithm recommending other videos the
second your student finishes watching. It keeps
their cognitive pathway clear. It does. And underlying
all of this, all these file choices, is a legal
and ethical requirement. Accessibility. This
is an option. It's a legal requirement for any
institution receiving U .S. federal funds. Your
materials must be perceivable, so captions for
audio, alt text for images. They have to be operable,
meaning they can be opened and navigated with
assistive tech. And they have to be understandable,
clear instructions, logical flow. OK, we've covered
design structure pretty thoroughly. But a high
quality course is also about the human element.
That brings us to standards three and four. Interaction
and instructor presence. Yes. What are some low
effort, high impact ways to build these in when
you're in a rush? The key word is intention.
A course that's spun up quickly can easily default
to being really passive. You know, read this,
watch that. We have to flip that. So standard
three, intentional interaction, is about building
in active learning. And it doesn't have to be
some complex group project. It can be simple
things. A required weekly peer review using a
tool that's already in your LMS. OK. Or a muddiest
point discussion forum. At the end of the week,
students have to post about the one thing they
still don't understand. That forces them to synthesize
the material, not just consume it. Immediately.
And it's fast to set up. And what about standard
four, the instructor's presence? It's so easy
for the teacher to just... disappear behind a
mountain of grading. It is. That's why the sources
say you have to plan your presence. Schedule
it. What does that look like? It could be pre
-recording a very short, maybe 90 -second orientation
video each week, using the announcement feature
daily, dedicating specific visible office hours,
even asynchronous ones, just for answering questions.
The goal is just to communicate that you're there,
that you're engaged. Yes, that builds trust,
it reduces anxiety, and again, it frees up more
of that precious germane cognitive capacity for
your students. And one quick note on standard
five. support systems. The instructor can't be
the only line to defense. No, absolutely not.
The fastest way to deal with tech questions is
to have a prominent section in your course that
links directly to institutional resources. The
IT help desk, the writing center, the library.
Let the experts handle it. Alright, let's pivot
now to the second major principle for quality,
which is alignment. This means intentionally
connecting everything. Your learning outcomes,
the tasks students do to show they've learned,
and the activities you use to prepare them. And
this brings us straight to a concept called backwards
design. It's really the engine that drives alignment.
You start with the end in mind. You do. You don't
start by planning your lectures. You start by
asking, what must my students learn? Then a second,
you define the performance, the assessment that
will prove they learned it. And only then do
you plan the instructional activities. Now, there's
a nuance here. The mantra is always clear and
measurable outcomes. But the source material
adds a note of caution. That obsessing over this
can sometimes backfire. Yeah, that's an important
point. An intense focus on really, really granular,
measurable outcomes for every single little thing
can sometimes narrow the scope of learning. It
can feel reductive. So it depends on the course.
It really depends on where the course sits in
the program. If it's a high -stakes required
capstone course for a major, then yes, that specificity
is critical. But for an introductory elective,
Maybe a little more flexibility is more motivating
for students. For those required courses, alignment
often leads to something called common assessments.
Yes, common assessments are basically a structural
tool to guarantee that alignment across all sections
of the same course. It ensures consistency, especially
with external expectations like licensing exams
or transfer agreements. This is often where faculty
push back, though, this idea of infringing on
academic freedom. That tension is very real.
And when you're asked to spin up a course quickly,
being handed a standardized final exam can feel
restrictive. So what's the solution? Well, the
institutional solution is often compensation
and inclusion. If you're asking faculty to create
and review these common assessments, you should
pay them for that work. And often, departments
will only mandate a common summative assessment,
like the midterm or final. So all the other assignments
are still up to the instigator. Exactly. It's
a compromise. And on a practical level, when
you're launching quickly, the advice is to use
low -stakes assignments at the very beginning.
Oh, absolutely. This ties right back to reducing
that extraneous load. The first assignments shouldn't
really be about content. They should be about
tool mastery. Can you upload a file? Can you
post in the discussion? Can you access the video?
You have to make sure they're fluent with the
technology of your classroom before you add the
anxiety of the content on top of it. And a final
thought on feedback. Digital tests can give immediate
feedback, which is great. It is, but you have
to be careful not to confuse test performance
with deep learning. They aren't the same thing.
And while those digital tests take a lot of time
to create up front, the formatting has to be
perfect for the auto grader. Perfect. But once
they're built, they are incredibly efficient
to deploy and grade. And that efficiency is a
huge, huge benefit when you're spinning up a
course and just trying to keep your head above
water. This has been a really fascinating dive
into designing for both clarity and efficiency.
So to recap, if you have to spin up a high quality
course, it really comes down to focusing on five
areas. Right. You reduce the cognitive friction
with intuitive design. You ensure alignment using
backwards design. You bake in active interaction.
You make your own presence intentional and planned.
And you connect students to the support systems
that already exist. And as we think about all
these structures that a rapid launch requires,
this reliance on standardized tests and efficient
grading, It raises a bigger question, doesn't
it? It does. It raises a philosophical question
about our priorities. I mean, the whole practice
of giving grades on a 100 -point scale is pretty
new, historically speaking. You can trace it
back to the United States Military Academy. built
entirely on standardization and rank. Precisely.
And we have so much research that consistently
shows that students who are motivated mainly
by external factors, like getting a high grade,
they tend to engage in more surface level learning.
They forget the material faster. So here's the
final thought for you to consider. How does this
need for speed and structure, the kind you have
when spinning up a course, how does that challenge
or maybe even reinforce our reliance on those
external motivators? like grades. Instead of
fostering a deeper, more intrinsic motivation
to learn. It's something to think about as you
design your next course, because even if you
have months to prepare, applying these principles,
designing for clarity, eliminating that cognitive
friction, and ensuring intentional alignment
will always maximize your students' focus on
what truly matters, the learning itself.