Planning an Online Course

What are you most concerned about as you embark on creating a curriculum unit?


My primary concern as we plan our curriculum unit is that, as in any instructional design, what seems to work in theory does not always translate to a good course. There are lots of teachers in this class who are probably very adept at planning good coursework, and thankfully I will be working with one of them :) It may be different when constructing an online course though. I feel as though I will know ways to prompt discussion and engagement, but just as in face to face course design, in a real course unit we would need to be ready to shift gears if the learners were not responding as we'd hoped. That "Plan B" we all keep in our pocket might not be as easy to implement in this environment. We shall see!

My other concern, if we do a combination of virtual classroom and virtual course, is that even if we have occasional live sessions (which we are talking about doing) there will not be participation - especially if it is optional.

As of right now those are my main concerns, but I'm sure they will snowball as we both reflect and dig in to start planning the actual mechanics of the course!