Online Course design | Choose the right tools | Online presence | Holistic Design

Introduction

The purpose of this guide is to give you a brief introduction to online pedagogy, particularly as it relates to the tools used at SPU.  There’s a lot of information here, and we hope that you find it helpful.  Usually the process of developing a fully-online course takes several months.  What we’re trying to do in this guide is provide a brief overview to get you started. 

This guide draws on ideas from various sources.  Some of the content comes out of ETM’s collective knowledge and experience.  Some content is drawn from comments in the discussion forums of SPU’s 2020 Faculty In-Service course and the student and faculty panels which were part of that in-service.  Some of it is from ETM’s professional networks. We don’t identify or reference who came up with which ideas as many of them came from multiple people or are treated as common knowledge in our professional community.  While we haven’t acknowledged exactly where each idea originated, we do, however, want to thank those members of the SPU community who have contributed their thoughts and ideas. 

Additional Resources

While it’s traditional to put additional resources at the end of a document, we have some excellent resources that we want to highlight for you right now.  These resources might prove useful as you develop your course.

  • The technology page of this website offers an overview of the tools supported by ETM.  It also provides answers to some FAQs.  Please read this page!
  • A book we heartily recommend is Small Teaching Online by Flower Darby. There are some digital copies of this available through the SPU Library, and it can also be ordered through Amazon or your favorite bookseller.
  • Faculty In-service 2020  This Canvas course was held in March 2020.  It provides a basic introduction to creating a home page in Canvas and to online teaching.  It also includes faculty panels and discussions on a variety of topics.
  • Undergraduate Remote Teaching Template. You can import this course template into your courses. It provides a model of what a Canvas course can look like and incorporates many elements of best practice for online teaching.  It also includes SPU images and SPU-themed buttons.  Instructions for how to import this into your course are here.  (Instructions for importing this can be found under number eight on the Canvas page of our website.) 
  • Growing With Canvas. This is a self-paced course created by Canvas that covers Canvas basics.  Contact ETM to be enrolled in this course.