Teaching Tip: Online education — managing time (part I)
July 14, 2015
One of the most common questions I hear is, “How much time is it going to take to
develop my online course?” This question reminds me of similar questions such as,
“How long does it take to build a house?” and “How long does it take to make dinner?”
The answers to these, of course, are, “It depends.” As a general rule, however, you
can expect about 100 hours of development time to create your online course. This
is for a course that you’ve already taught face-to-face several times and with assistance
from a UAF eLearning instructional designer.
The ideal outcome of the development process is that your course is completed well
ahead of a given term. All your activities, assignments, assessments and scheduling
structural work are completed before students walk through the virtual classroom door.
This is one of the big differences between online teaching and face-to-face teaching.
Much of one’s time investment in an online course occurs before the semester begins.
That is a lot of time to extract from your summer or to squeeze from your already
busy semester.
However, once your course is open and the semester begins, everyone reaps the benefits
of your development investment. You’re not planning tomorrow’s lecture and class activities
so much as interacting with students and providing assessment, feedback and mentoring.
Earlier this spring, eLearning sponsored a series of lectures by Oregon State University
faculty member Sebastian Heiduschke. Heiduschke led an effort at OSU to bring their
undergraduate major in German online. He put together a nice illustration of the time
commitment differences between between face-to-face and online education.
Interested in more about time management and preparing for classes? Read the full
Teaching Tip on iTeachU.
Teaching Tip by Owen Guthrie, eLearning instructional designer
Watch the Teaching Tip Live recorded session with Heiduschke