Nursing Web quest Examples. Used with permission.
Goals and Objectives (Outcomes)
In distance education, writing clear, measurable goals and objectives or outcomes is critical to ensure that students know the course expectations and how faculty will assess their learning. Each lesson, module, or activity should identify the purpose, goals, and objectives; provide clear directions for what students are to do; and provide a scoring rubric or guide for evaluation of students’ achievement of the objectives or outcomes. These should also include due dates and time periods.
Instructional and Learner Activities
Instructional and learner activities should provide learners with the skills, knowledge, and experience necessary to meet the course objectives. These activities or experiences should consider the learners’ need for engagement, activity, and relevance to the content, objectives, and work world. This means that the professor will need to take advantage of the tool set available through the CMS software as well as tool sets available from outside sources. It may also mean that the professor must step outside his or her comfort zone in learning new ways to deliver the course and develop relevant learning experiences. Faculty should have access to a wide variety of collaborative tools that encourage interaction with the content and with others. These tools include wikis, blogs, discussion forums, journals, and WebQuests. Other learner activities could include developing podcasts, videos, and group projects. When designing course activities, keep in mind that active participation facilitates learning better than does passive participation. For training, the same applies, making it relevant to the work tasks. As an example, teaching how to use Excel and related features with activities that demonstrate common uses from the work setting is much more effective than a basic, intermediate, and advanced perspective for organizing the learning.
To help guide the selection of learning activities, one should consider the use of a model like the Community of Inquire Model, with its three main concepts of social presence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence.49,50 Social presence refers to establishing a support learning community where students can engage in meaningful communication and develop social relationships. Cognitive presence is the development of learning materials where students construct knowledge through reflection and discussions. Teaching presence is the last concept that deals with designing the learning experiences, guiding the learning, and moving the students to the desired student learning outcomes.