Overview
Examine your current face-to-face course offering(s) to assess which aspects you can maintain in the virtual classroom, and which need to be removed or modified to adapt your course for online instruction.
Depending on how many intended learning outcomes (ILOs), instructional strategies, and approaches to assessment you have, this document could get quite lengthy. However, taking a close look at these three aspects of your course (and understanding how they fit together) will make your transition to the online version of your course much simpler, and will allow you to seek out targeted support.
Step 1: Take Stock of Your Face-to-Face (F2F) Course
Alignment is the connection between ILOs, instructional strategies, and assessment. An aligned course is one where ILOs match with instructional strategies and assessments, so students learn what you intend and you can accurately assess this learning.
In order to help ensure your course is in alignment, ask yourself:
- What specific things should students learn in this course (i.e., your intended learning outcomes)?
- What methods do I use to convey these learnings (i.e., what are your instructional strategies)?
- How do I measure whether or not each learning outcome has been fulfilled (i.e., what assessments do you use in this course?).
Use the table below as a start, ensuring that each of your F2F course’s ILOs are listed on their own line. If you need a refresher on writing intended learning outcomes, please see this resource from CTE.
Remember: this is for your course as it currently exists, not the online version you aspire to. If you are teaching more than one course, complet a separate document for each course.
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Intended Learning Outcomes
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Instructional Strategies
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Assessment
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EXAMPLE: By the end of the course, students will develop a leisure program that addresses the needs of individuals with a specific disability.
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- Deliver short weekly lectures on etiology of disabilities commonly encountered in TR practice
- Assign course readings on adapted and inclusive leisure programming
- During an in-class work session, collaboratively develop a sample leisure plan as a model for students
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Students will work in self-selected groups of three or four to create a month-long leisure program for a population of their choosing (e.g., play skills for children with autism)
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Step 2: Review Intended Learning Outcomes
Review your current ILOs and decide whether they will be removed, modified, or maintained.
For example, if you have an ILO that focuses on students working with a community organization, consider whether this will have to be removed completely, or whether it could be modified to include virtual consultation or collaboration with a community organization.
Add any ideas or questions you have about your ILOs.
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Intended Learning Outcomes
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Remove, Modify, or Maintain?
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Ideas or Questions
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EXAMPLE: By the end of the course, students will develop a leisure program that addresses the needs of individuals with a specific disability.
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Maintain (or possibly modify, if group work is not an option).
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This is usually done in a group—can I maintain that group work component somehow? Or will this have to be independent? If the latter, perhaps I can change it slightly so that students are reviewing or consulting on a pre-developed program rather than creating something from scratch on their own.
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Step 3: Review Instructional Strategies
Review your current Instructional Strategies and decide whether they will be removed, modified, or maintained.
For example, if you typically ask students to complete readings from a textbook, this could easily be modified to an e-version of the text or by compiling readings on e-Reserves.
Add any ideas or questions you have about your Instructional Strategies.
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Instructional Strategies
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Remove, Modify, or Maintain?
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Ideas or Questions
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EXAMPLE: Deliver short weekly lectures on etiology of disabilities commonly encountered in TR practice
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Modify
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Instead of doing these face-to-face in real time, I could create and post short video lectures each week. I’m wondering: what’s the best way to record these? Are narrated PowerPoints best? How long should they be? Where in Learn should I upload them?
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Step 4: Review Assessment
Look at your current approaches to assessment and decide whether they will be removed, modified, or maintained.
For example, if you typically have weekly online quizzes that check for comprehension, those quizzes can be maintained.
Add any ideas or questions you have about your approaches to Assessment.
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Assessment
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Remove, Modify, or Maintain?
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Ideas or Questions
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EXAMPLE: Students work in self-selected groups of three or four to create a month-long leisure program for a population of their choosing (e.g., play skills for children with autism)
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Maintain (or possibly modify, if group work is not an option).
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Ideally, I’d like to maintain this group work assignment. The materials I’ve already created can easily be posted on Learn for student use. How can I manage group work virtually? Is it okay to ask students to collaborate in an online course? How will they communicate?
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Step 5: Identify Key Ideas and Questions
Go through your work from Steps 2-4, identify your key questions and ideas, and list them below.
Review any resources or help documents that you have access to. Where you can, identify possible answers or solutions to your questions.
If you are feeling stumped, don’t worry!
Step 6: Beginning to Build
Once you have aligned (or re-aligned) your course for the online teaching environment, you have the framework you need to begin building.
When you are ready to explore approaches and tools for designing and delivering your instructional strategies and assessments, don’t hesitate to contact remoteteaching@uwaterloo.ca
Don’t forget the accessibility and community-building considerations outlined elsewhere on this site.
And remember: the foundation of a great course is that it is well-aligned. Your course need not have all the bells and whistles to be effective and engaging for students (sometimes less is more!).
Created by Zara Rafferty, Teaching Fellow, Applied Health Sciences
