To avoid making courses feel like correspondence courses, it’s important that they are built with lots of clear input and presence from both the SME and the instructor of the live course. It is also a federal guideline that courses provide “regular and substantive interaction” between students and instructors.

SME Engagement

Ways to increase the visibility of the SME who created the course…

• Ensure they provide context around learning materials
  • Why should they read this? How does it relate to course goals?
  • Is this author important or a notable figure in the field?
  • What should students pay special attention to?
  • What is the point of this item as it relates to the course?
• Provide a welcome video introducing themselves as the builder of the course (who may not be the instructor)
  • This can provide important background information to students as to why this person is showing up in the lecture videos, but isn’t the instructor teaching the course.
• Lecture videos/recordings

Instructor Engagement

Ways to build opportunities for the instructor to interact with students…

• Create discussion forums that instructors are expected to participate in/lead.
• Create rubrics that allow for individualized feedback on assignments.
• Provide placeholders for weekly “check-in” videos.
  • Consider leaving a suggested outline for these videos to provide future instructors some additional information about the types of things they should mention (but encourage them to share what they feel is important/relevant).
• Using the Instructor Start-Up module, make suggestions for announcement content that can be shared while the course is being taught