Continuing with the backward design approach, once you have your outcomes and the assignments you’ll use to assess those outcomes, you then need to look at the instructional materials you’re providing your students to help them successfully complete your assignments. You may already have some of your materials identified such as textbooks, other books, articles, or online publisher materials or digital learning tools.
As you put together your instructional materials, if you’re gathering materials that were not created by you or by the publisher of a text that your students have purchased, you should always verify the use and attribution requirements for those materials.
As you evaluate instructional materials, the first things you normally consider are
When evaluating instructional materials, consider the extent to which each is i nteresting, approachable, and engaging. This isn’t about materials being “entertaining.” It’s about whether it can spark curiosity and promote deeper thinking about the content. The more engaged students are with the materials you provide for learning, the more they’ll learn. To encourage engagement it is helpful to include a variety of types of materials in addition to text such as images, charts, diagrams, audio, video, or interactive activities. When you provide more than one way to learn something, it’s more likely learners will find a way that engages them and helps them learn. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) offers a robust framework for thinking about multiple means of representation as well as multiple means of expression and action.
There are some specific things to look for in both text and video materials that can increase the potential for engagement.
As you look at text-based materials, there are a few things to consider.
You’ll also want to identify things in the material that need your explanation or commentary. If you normally talk through a resource in class, you’ll need to provide that scaffolding to your students online through annotations, narrations, or other means.
Part of evaluating video materials is determining how much and what sort of video would be useful for your students. Here we are talking primarily about video that others have made. We’ll look more specifically at video that you make later in this module.
If you want your students to be able to do something that someone can demonstrate, then video would be a very good option. If your content involves specific places or cultures, video can help to make them real to your students in ways that pictures and words on a page cannot. If parts of your content are especially challenging to your students, walking through these rough points with diagrams or a virtual whiteboard can provide clarification. If your students have difficulty engaging with the content, videos can offer a more approachable way in.
Good places to start to look for videos are
While not technically video, the Smithsonian Institute’s Smithsonian X 3D Explorer offers a collection of artifacts and tours that are interactive and, as the name suggests, 3-dimensional.
As an example of an engaging video you might pull into your course, here is one created by IU Media Arts and Sciences lecturer Mathew A. Powers in collaboration with both author John Green and his production company and School of Informatics alumni on the history of games. The video is part of a larger series stemming from his History of Video Games course.
definitionUniversal Design for Learning (UDL) is a set of principles for curriculum development that give all individuals equal opportunities to learn. UDL provides a blueprint for creating instructional goals, methods, materials, and assessments that work for everyone--not a single, one-size-fits-all solution but rather flexible approaches that can be customized and adjusted for individual needs.
