An adapted excerpt from Google Course Builder

 

 

Implement the course with technology

In "Develop the content without technology", you did most of the detailed plan of your course. Once you have a clear idea what you want to accomplish, it’s time to put it into the format you’ll use. At this point, you can create videos, implement assessments, set up your groups, and do all that other fun stuff.

This is the only part of the process that is really specific to building a course. (For a complete step-by-step checklist, see Course Builder Checklist.)

Some overall tips

Do not try to immediately create a beautiful, final, finished product.
Instead, implement a rough version that contains all of the major material. Don’t polish the writing; don’t do final edits on the videos. Keep in mind that the next step is to pilot your course to see how well it works with an audience. When you do that, you discover things you want to change. Make sure your schedule allows you to do so. Avoid investing so much in implementation that you cannot afford to redo things when you discover that you need to.

Separate basic from advanced material.
Design the primary flow of your material for the middle ground of students -- not too easy and not too hard. You might want to make extra material available to students at either end of the spectrum. You can put extra material in a variety of places, as discussed in optional material.

Online students don’t give you the feedback you’re used to.
When you can see your students, as in a live class, you have a huge amount of input to guide what you do. You can see where they’re interested, where they get bored, and where they’re confused. However, for an online course, you create all of the course material and decide on the exact delivery before you deliver it; you cannot change it on the fly. You get no feedback from your students to allow you to adjust the content. The most you can do is discuss it with your students using the mechanisms available to you. You can also collect data to help improve future versions of the course.

Take heart.
If you’re an experienced classroom teacher, you know that in a class of 30, there’s usually one troublemaker, one student who progresses slowly, and one student who progresses quickly. If your course reaches 30,000 students, that one troublemaker becomes 1,000 troublemakers, and so on. Keep your perspective. It’s still the same phenomenon.

Once you’ve implemented your content, it’s time to move on to piloting with your target audience.