June Haldeman

Introduction

To answer the question, “What is my experience with online courses?” I want to highlight my course development process, and showcase an eLearning artifact that is available online. Because the development materials for the online courses have interdepartmental feedback that I cannot share, I intend to discuss how I manage my instructional design and eLearning responsibilities.

Course Development

Process

I follow four of the five ADDIE steps when developing an online course, Analyze, design, develop, and implement. Because my courses are often reassigned to other instructional designers, I do not review the course evaluations very often. That said, I do ask instructors about their experience teaching online courses during the analysis stage.

At my job, instructional designers only work on a course with an instructor. With the emergence of AI and concerns about cheating, I always ask if my instructor is concerned about AI use. Conversely, I I also ask instructors interested in AI how they want to utilize if. Other considerations like grading, assessments, and online student activities are also discussed.

Online course development takes seven months, but I must complete analysis and design by the first month so instructor can complete all their lecture recordings by the third month for checkpoint 3. To ensure that instructors understand and approve the course setup, I utilize SAM.

eLearning Authoring with SAM

SAM, the abbreviation for Successive Approximation Model, helps me develop prototypes for grading, group projects, and course navigation.

SAM	Analyze	Design	Develop
Cycle 1 – Test	How can an online course foster class collaboration?	Offer options for group assignments, discussion boards and other LMS tool options	Provide recommended eLearning setups for the instructor to review.
Cycle 2 – Refine	How can the instructor manage the online course?	Create a weekly module prototype and grade setup based on the instructor’s feedback and available course materials.	Replicate approved setup for each learning module. Create the grade setup to add group assignments to midterm and final grades.

I also utilize SAM when I create eLearning tutorials for instructors and students.

eLearning Artifact

When I create training content, I first review the available documents to draft a handout for students or instructors. If there is a need for a video tutorial, then the handout serves as a storyboard and a start of a tutorial script.

Once the handouts and videos are finalized, they appear on various eLearning webpages that are openly available online. Instructors and other campus departments can then decide to post these tutorial links on in their courses or eLearning organization setups.

Project Management

Although I am aware of management programs like Asana, my job utilizes Excel, Outlook, and Teams to track work and review progress. Currently I rely on one Excel spreadsheet for the following

• Training Records
• Course Design
• Training Content
• Student Worker Tasks

I developed and revised the Student Worker task sheet with feedback from student workers hired by the eLearning training manager so the students and I could review each other’s questions, feedback, and completion notes for completing training materials, and testing eLearning setups.

Conclusion

This is a small sample of the work I complete as an instructional designer and trainer. Assisting instructors with designing and managing online courses because of sudden internal and external challenges.