Our hybrid course development group consists of two primary instructors (Steve and Dave) and two “content providers” (myself and Michael). Our four-person subgroup tends to meet after the larger hybrid course group meeting. As a first stab at gathering current, relevant online content, Michael and I were given free rein to browse and to nominate various content that fit under headings in a previous ecampus course syllabus. At our last subgroup meeting, we presented our ideas. What we had all previously known – that the listed topics were already to numerous to cover in one term – became even more apparent as we talked about various topics on the list. After the meeting, Steve and Dave worked to streamline the topics list and produce a revised syllabus. With this list, and with the directive to include selected content from the ecampus course reading list, Michael and I are now armed to begin building the Blackboard framework for the course. I had to ask myself whether the initial content-gathering effort was worthwhile, as it is unclear to me at this point whether any of that content will be used. I concluded that the exercise of gathering content and presenting it to the instructors served a different purpose: it gave the instructors space to re-familiarize themselves with the topics list and to rethink the topics and their order of presentation. It’s a good thing that we have an archive of content from which to draw, and proper placement of any new content will now be more clear with the revised syllabus. The content-gathering effort also inspired me to think of a different type of biotechnology\/philosophy ecampus course that I think would be fun to develop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Our hybrid course development group consists of two primary instructors (Steve and Dave) and two “content providers” (myself and Michael). Our four-person subgroup tends to meet after the larger hybrid course group meeting. As a first stab at gathering current, … Continue reading