Excellence in Online Course Design
This award recognizes exemplary undergraduate- or graduate-level courses that meet or exceed the Quality Guidelines for University of Waterloo Online Courses. Author(s) worked collaboratively with CEL in the design and development.
2022: MATH 106 - Applied Linear Algebra 1
MATH 106 is the 2022 Winner of the Online Course Design Award. It is an intensive first-year course, taken by students studying a range of disciplines, that provides them with an abundance of opportunities to learn mathematics by doing mathematics. Students can demonstrate their achievements in diverse ways, with encouragement to practice and review rich amounts of detailed feedback.
Some design components that stand out are:
- Course materials were designed for reuse in the on-campus version of the course.
- Automatically graded Möbius assignments allow instructors to devote more time to students.
- The Un-essay assignment provides an opportunity for students in different disciplines to apply a linear algebra concept to a topic in their field.
- The course provides many opportunities for students to connect each other as well as with the instructors.
Three Design Features
MATH 106 was intentionally designed around 3 specific features:
Design Feature #1. People learn mathematics by doing mathematics.
The course uses the full power of technology to introduce new materials and enable students to practice them immediately. The interactive textbook contains approximately 150 inline exercises spread over 8 units. These exercises are mostly algorithmic as opposed to static, meaning that each question contains at least one random variable, which allows students to repeat the exercise with different numbers and outcomes. This provides students with immediate and detailed feedback.
Linear algebra is a very visual subject as most concepts have natural geometric interpretation. This is sometimes hard to notice behind dry mathematical formulas. The digital textbook contains up to 50 interactive applets, narrated slideshows, and videos. Interactive applets, also known as “Making Connections” exercises, are especially useful when students are expected to explore the object on their own.
Short, narrated slideshows create instructor presence, provide multiple means of presentation, and emphasize processes with voice, colour, or both.
Among other things, the authors found videos to be especially effective when explaining the change of coordinates and diagonalization—by far two most difficult concepts of any introductory linear algebra class.
Design Feature #3. Keep the learner active!
Studying is hard, and one of the main challenges learners face is having to pay attention for a relatively long period of time. That’s what makes reading physical textbooks so challenging!
The material in MATH 106 is organized so that most pages do not contain huge blocks of text. Following the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) it uses various modes of presentation to make sure the reader stays engaged. A block of text can be followed by an example, then by a Möbius exercise, then by text again, followed by a “Making Connections” exercise. Each page is typically relatively short, and big sections are split into multiple pages so students consume the material in bite-sized pieces. Most concepts are also presented from multiple angles.
Course Image - A two-dimensional subspace in a three-dimensional space.
Student feedback
“I think that this course was created in such a way that gave students the best chance at success. So many resources were provided to help students develop a full understanding of all the mathematical concepts we learned and opportunities to connect with other students as well as the Professor were provided.”
What helped me learn? "The organization of the course. The weekly pages were very helpful as I had to see what content I had to learn and what was due that week. The lessons were nice to have and with practice questions to check your learning.”
“I really enjoyed the un-essay! It was a great (way) to get to choose a project based on my own interests.”
"We were given multiple opportunities throughout the term to re-submit assignments for evaluation to show growth in learning. This allowed me to solidify my understanding of certain concepts, and get graded accordingly.”
What helped me learn? “The way the projects were laid out made them very easy to learn from. There was space to make mistakes and redo assignments and the work itself was focused on understanding concepts, not regurgitating formulas”.
Course Image - A shot from the video on change of bases.
Faculty Endorsements:
Arundhathi Krishnan, Math 106 Instructor Winter 2022, stated in her recommendation letter that “my takeaway from teaching MATH 106 is that online courses such as these are a tremendous resource. Their ability to embellish mathematics with innovative, interactive technological tools helps us as instructors, and aids student learning. I am happy to have been able to be an instructor for a well-designed course such as MATH 106.”
Burcu Karabina, who created the Manim videos, and has taught MATH 106 in a blended format, says that Amanda and Anton “constantly demonstrate an innovative and creative approach to curriculum design that is both effective and engaging…They incorporate a range of technologies and pedagogical strategies to meet the diverse needs of students and foster active collaborative learning communities."
“That the work of Prof Mosunov and Prof Garcia got nominated for this award is not surprising given what can be extracted from peer reviews of their teaching. Those reviews were conducted at the request of the Associate Dean and as part of our performance evaluation and progression protocols.” [One reviewer stated] “The amount of effort [they] put into designing lectures, assessments, additional learning opportunities/resources, and, perhaps most importantly, ensuring a positive learning environment for every student, is outstanding.”
Mark Giesbrecht
Dean, Faculty of Mathematics
The Authors want to recognize the following for their contributions:
- The starting point for MATH 106 was a set of course notes prepared by Ryan Trelford.
- Burcu Karabina helped immensely with building Manim videos.
Support was provided by these CEL staff members: Jane Chomyc, Rachael Verbruggen, Subasha Wickramarachchi, Igor Paravinja, Mallory Gilmore and Sarah Hales.
2021 - Math 237: Calculus 3 for Honours Mathematics
Math 237: Calculus 3 for Honours Mathematics, created by Amanda Garcia and Burcu Karabina, has earned the 2021 Online Course Design Award. The course is very critical to the faculty’s mission as it is part of a group of three courses that every student in Math must take.
The course is based on a set of course notes authored by professors Wainwright, West, and Wolczuk. It was designed to be highly interactive and engaging, leveraging the online environment to allow more practice opportunities and hands-on exploration of concepts than would be possible in a classroom. A variety of formative and summative assessment strategies are used, which gradually scaffold practice from ungraded concept checks to larger, higher-weight assessments requiring synthesis of knowledge.
Course Design Goals
- Design for all students
Students are provided with a variety of options for demonstrating their comprehension through check-in questions, computer-graded Möbius assignments (both for practice and graded), and written assignments. These elements combine to create an inclusive course experience that takes a variety of learner profiles into account and incorporates active learning experiences.
- Put students at the centre of their own learning
Students are prepared for their assignments through step-by-step interactive worked examples with immediate feedback, interactive applications, and problem sets at increasing levels of difficulty. They become independent problem-solvers and build confidence in their own skills.
- Use technology to its full potential
Choosing the right tool to convey bottleneck course concepts required careful consideration, and the authors took advantage of technology to engage students and increase their curiosity. The course uses Möbius to offer a diversity of asset types, including text, videos, slideshows, GeoGebra applets, and a wide variety of question types including multiple-choice, math entry, algorithmic questions, and adaptive questions.
- Modular course design
MATH 237 lessons and assignments were created so that they can be used in other courses that cover multivariable calculus content.
Course Delivery Goals
The course has 2 delivery goals:
The course authors wanted to ensure a strong instructor presence. To achieve this they created an interactive textbook and made sure students had many opportunities to interact with each other and with the teaching team. Instructors created assignment and weekly recap videos which provided students with insights and intuition but also maintained instructor presence. They hosted an informal weekly Calculus café, held regular online office hours and worked closely with students on accommodations so their efforts were acknowledged.
They also wanted to foster metacognition skills. The immediate feedback provided both in the lessons and on Mobius Assignments gave students the opportunity to continually gauge their level of understanding of course material; implicitly building metacognitive skills. Written assignments were used to make these skills more explicit; as well as typical calculation questions, they also included a section entitled "Think About Your Thinking", which encouraged students to become mindful learners and investigate the value of self-assessment.
Student Feedback
Math 237 was a tremendous undertaking to create and has received extremely positive student feedback. Fall survey results indicated that 92% of students who completed the course survey felt that the learning outcomes for the course were clearly identified, 91% of students felt that the course materials and activities helped them understand the course concepts, and 92% of students felt that the assessments contributed to their learning.
“I really appreciated and benefited from the format, especially the choice to teach the content in a text format rather than videoed lectures. The text, combined with many examples, images, and short video explanations were very engaging and helpful to learn.”
Student surveys consistently indicated that the modular course design was very organized, easy to follow, and effective at communicating learning objectives.
“Our written assignments were structured in a way that helped promote critical thinking and reflection on the concepts learned. Countless resources were provided to help us with the content and assignments; not only did they aid in succeeding in assignments, but also in general in understanding the different abstract ideas introduced in this course.”
Endorsement from the Dean
I am very happy with the work produced by Amanda Garcia and Burcu Karabina in the incarnation of this version of MATH 237 online. I fully endorse this nomination for the Excellence in Online Course Design Award.
Dr. Mark Giesbrecht
Dean, Faculty of Mathematics.
2020 - FR 250: Intermediate Spoken French
In the past, this course was exclusively offered in person, available only to a limited number of students each term. However, after two years of development and a successful launch in September 2019, the online version has allowed the department to enrol more students and offer it on a more frequent basis.
Course Objectives:
The learning objectives fall into two general categories:
- Comprehension: to develop better French listening skills, to master essential grammar rules and conjugation, and to improve vocabulary.
- Speaking: to master pronunciation and basic phonetics, to confidently produce grammatically and syntactically correct sentences, to talk more spontaneously and fluently with individuals or in front of an audience.
To meet these objectives, the authors wanted to put communication activities and spoken tasks at the heart of the learning process. It quickly became evident that there would be two steps required to progress through each module. First, the students would need the opportunity to learn course material through targeted practice and second they would need to apply that knowledge through oral activities.
Instructor Feedback
This is the third time I have taught FR 250 online, in addition to having taught it once in class prior to the pandemic. I really enjoy teaching it online, mainly because it gives me latitude and flexibility. The course content is well organized, and I rarely receive questions from students seeking clarification. Expectations are also clearly explained and spoken tasks are detailed enough that both the students and the course instructor know what to do.
Creating Virtual Activities
Teaching oral production of a language is difficult enough face to face, but it is especially challenging in an asynchronous, online format. To overcome this difficulty this course uses two tools (H5P and Bongo) to create appropriate and engaging presentation, practice, and assessment of course material to meet the challenging intended learning outcomes.
H5P is an open-source tool that makes it easy to create a wide range of interactive activities accessible on most devices. Combining its most basic features such as fill in the blanks, drag and drop, mark the words with more advanced functionalities like interactive videos, image sequencing, or voice recognition, a unique learning path was developed that suits all the course’s desired outcomes.
Bongo allowed for the development of synchronous and asynchronous spoken tasks that reproduce various situations of oral communication. Video Assignments and Virtual Classrooms recreate the in-class context mentioned above. The 28 spoken tasks allow students to work on specific outcomes (vocabulary, pronunciation, cultural topics, etc.) in many different contexts.
No Textbook Required
The authors, working with CEL, created all of the course content which means the course is not reliant on publisher's resources or textbooks. Students are spared the costs, it allows content to be modified when necessary, and avoids the disruptions that come with textbook edition changes or website updates.
Course Structure and Module Organization
The course is divided into five modules, and students have two to three weeks to complete each one. The first module serves as an introduction and allows learners to understand how the tools work together.
- Objectives (Objectifs)
- To begin with (Pour commencer)
- Activities (Activités)
- Linguistic content (Capsules linguistiques)
- Tasks (Tâches à réaliser)
Each module also gravitates around a key theme (The Hexagon; Being a student; Social networks; French gastronomy) for better harmony of learned vocabularies and linguistic structures.
Student Feedback
I enjoyed the module layout. Gave plenty of time to learn at your own pace. Video assignments got us interacting with the material and practicing spoken French. How organized each module is. Good mix of types of assignments.
The Learning Path
This learning progression (or learning path) can be broken down into two steps:
- a training period where students acquire knowledge (1, 2, 3, 4) and
- communication activities, as described above, where they put the acquired knowledge into practice (5).
The authors built the content based on their teaching experience from the in-class version of the course, and use authentic material such as clips, news reports, documentaries, vlogs, radio broadcasts, songs, and chronicles for all the activities. The components were put together to create layers of interactions and make the whole learning experience more engaging.
The interactive activities are used in a formative (not summative) way. In other words, marks received by students while progressing through the interactive activities are not linked to their gradebook. The idea is to help them learn the course material without the stress of receiving a bad grade during the training period, encouraging students to try rather than penalizing them for attempting to answer a question they do not yet know the answer to. In fact, the hope was that students would make mistakes so they can learn from the feedback embedded in the activities. It does not mean, however, that these activities are not formally assessed since students take regular quizzes.
Comments from the Chair
This course remains, to the best of my knowledge, the only fully online, fully asynchronous spoken French course offered at a Canadian university.
It is with great enthusiasm that I support the nomination of FR250 for an Excellence in Online Course Design Award, in recognition of the creativity and technical skills of the course authors, Dr. Tsedryk and Dr. Hebbinckuys, of the extremely positive feedback we have received from students, and for the greater benefits it has provided to the Department of French Studies.
Tara Collington
Chair, French Studies
2019 - PSYCH 101: Introductory to Psychology
Introductory Psychology, PSYCH 101 has been awarded the Online Course Design Award for 2018-19. The author of PSYCH 101 is Paul Wehr, a lecturer in the Psychology Department, who has a passion for undergraduate instruction and support.
The online section of PSYCH101 enrols upwards of 200 students in every term. This survey course is intended to prepare students with the fundamental information of the discipline, but also to help them achieve success at university (and subsequently in a variety of professional careers) through explicit skills development.
Learning Outcomes
Paul designed the course with four broad learning outcomes in mind:
- To explain and apply core concepts (content).
- To appreciate the role of science in psychology (content).
- To gain greater insight into the self and others (personal reflection).
- To develop and practice translatable skills (skills training).
To assess these goals Paul set up multiple, relatively low-stakes assessments which include:
- Four study skills modules: online readiness, metacognition, peer feedback and library skills (each worth 1% of the final grade)
- Twelve weekly quizzes (each worth 3%)
- Two written assignments (15% and 20%)
- Final Exam (25%)
Course Design
PSYCH 101 ONLINE is a highly engaging course that uses a variety of strategies to help students learn course material efficiently, and to engage and motivate them. It includes opportunities for students to interact with and learn from each other, their instructor, and the course content.
Resembling a multimodal e-textbook, the content is primarily text-based. This is important to students, as it enables them to search for and find content quickly. Text is enhanced with a variety of media including images, video, audio, and interactive exercises. Presenting a mix of media breaks up the text and helps to focus students’ attention on important concepts. Interpolated questions provide formative feedback for students, enabling them to check their understanding of the material. This design is informed by CEL’s own User Experience Design for Learning research.
The course scores consistently high in all categories of the Student Perception Survey, which is a very strong endorsement in a large, online class.
Paul’s design of Psych 101 was strongly endorsed by Heather Henderson, Chair of the Department of Psychology:
“Paul’s class provides a model for not only other online courses in Psychology, but for many of our in-class courses as well… His focus on using mixed pedagogies to provide an overview of the core theories and scientific findings in the field provide the foundation for an innovative offering that reflects the unique approach to teaching and research at UW.”
2018 - GEOG 181: Designing Effective Maps
The Authors decided to offer this foundational course in GIS online to provide an alternative for students who had scheduling challenges with the on-campus course. It is a great example of how straightforward, but solid, course design can result in a positive online learning experience for students.
The course carefully pairs weekly theoretical “lecture content” with complementary lab exercises; reinforcing the theoretical material with hands-on map design and production. Throughout the term, students have the opportunity to witness current application and real world examples of GIS, and interact with each other and with the instructors to share ideas and assist with problem solving using online discussion forums
Students emphasized the importance of course structure (“well organized,” “straightforward”) along with “relevant, interesting assignments that connected directly back to course content” to their learning, and stated that the course specifically encouraged them to continue to learn more about GIS as a result of their experience with GEOG 181.
2017 - ENGL 362/DRAMA 386: Shakespeare 1
Highlights of the course design include:
- directly addressing the relevance of the subject matter for today’s student
- consistently and thoughtfully linking the visual design with the course content
- promoting student autonomy by providing them with some choice in how their learning will be assessed
According to Ted “One of the most challenging, creative, enjoyable and rewarding aspects of developing the course was finding and integrating visual materials to illustrate, clarify, confirm and supplement lecture content.” Ted was grateful for the expertise and support provided by CEL.
2016 - RS 270R: Religion and Popular Culture
“It’s nice to know that you’ve done something that
The Online Course Design award goes to Doug Cowan, Professor of Religious Studies and Social Development Studies for his authorship of RS 270R: Religion and Popular Culture, developed with CEL support.
Cowan’s design of RS 270R included a thoughtful emphasis on providing opportunities for peer-to-peer learning, interaction among students, instructor presence, and effective feedback. Overall, Cowan’s main goal is to “give students critical and analytical tools, so that they can go out and live their lives.” In other words, Cowan wants to give students a tool kit that will help them think critically, no matter what context they’re in.
Students who nominated RS 270R for the Online Course Design award found the online lectures visually appealing and enjoyed the interaction that the online discussions offered. The course also benefited from Cowan’s passionate delivery of course content, as well as his active engagement in his students’ learning.
If you have any questions about the awards please email Extended Learning.