When I was a graduate student, I enrolled in a course that I was very excited about, and I decided to explore the course website right before the classes began. To my surprise, and a bit of disappointment, the course website was like a deserted town. No syllabus, no instructor information, no announcements, not even a welcome message. I felt totally unsure about what to expect. I wasn’t even sure if the course would meet my needs.

That is exactly the opposite how you want to make your student feel. Your course should be welcoming, exciting, motivating, informing, clear in communication, engaging and inclusive. My role is to assist you in building your course along with these features so that your students do not (virtually) walk out of your course lost and disengaged.

To begin, it is always helpful to work with checklists. Before you start building or reviewing your online course, prepare a checklist of the things you think should be included or changed while building an online course (of course I will have my own checklist ready). In our meetings, we will compare and discuss our checklists and address the needs of your course. The checklists will be our reference throughout the process. You can start off with smaller changes and arrangements, and break down large chunks of lectures and assignments in your course. Be ready to be flexible and open to communicate with your students: they are the key elements of your course, so they should feel proactively included, not just passive receivers of the course material.