In the last chapter, you learned the best way to develop a course in Moodle that will be used for self-directed and self-guided students. In that case, the focus was primarily on creating a course that is very clear, self-explanatory, and easy to follow.
Now, as we turn to other types of courses, you'll find that most of the guidelines you followed in developing courses for independent study also apply to courses that are instructor-led and include groups of students who work together. The group, or the cohort, progresses together, and the advantage of having an individual instructor lies in the fact that he/she can provide guidance and personalized feedback to the students.
In this chapter, you'll learn how to best set up a cohort-based course that allows teacher-student interaction. We'll review the best structure to use and the best combination of plugins, resources, and activities to make sure that your course is very flexible and meets the needs of students and teachers, and also provides behind-the-scenes support, which includes Moodle administrators and instructional designers.
We'll start by looking at the main features of an instructor-led cohort-based course, and keep in mind that the course revolves around instructor communication and guidance along with coordinated student performance.
Then, we'll look at the main sources of student and instructor anxiety. Students in an online course that is guided by an instructor are often most worried about the expectations of the instructor. Further, they want to make sure that they are not going to get lost while looking for the course material and exams, and can perform well in a timely fashion. Instructors want to be able to communicate effectively with students and provide timely and effective feedback on assessments.
In this chapter, we'll discuss the following topics:
- Configuring global settings for instructor-led cohort-based courses
- Modifying the appearance globally, including themes
- Selecting the ideal plugins, activities, resources, and assessments
- Developing different ways for instructors to interact with students
- Organizing course material and activities
- Selecting effective assessments
The traditional face-to-face college course is a cohort-based course and has a fixed number of students who progress together to complete the course, and they're led by an instructor who guides them and provides feedback and assessments.
Online courses are very similar. The only difference is that there are more ways to communicate with each other, since you're working in an online environment and the students may be working together for one class or a series of classes.
The main characteristics of instructor-led cohort-based courses include the following:
- A common start and end date
- A fixed timeline that keeps all students working together
- Communication with the instructor, who provides guidance and feedback
- Student interaction and collaboration, with a focus on communication
- Assessments with instructor guidance and feedback
It is an interesting fact that most online courses in U.S. higher education are cohort based, and they are regularly compared with face-to-face courses in terms of performance, course completion, and satisfaction.
Note
You can learn more about online learning in U.S. higher education in the Sloan Consortium's eleventh annual report, Grade Change: Tracking Online Education in the United States, 2013 at the Sloan-C website at http://sloanconsortium.org/publications/survey/grade-change-2013.
As in the case of self-paced independent study courses, instructor-led cohort-based courses can vary widely in their length, scope, complexity, and goals. In colleges and universities, some can require as few as four weeks to complete. Others, however, focus on 8-week or 16-week semester-long courses. Some organizations may cover the material in four weeks, with four separate weekly milestones (topics or units). Online instructor-led cohort-based courses can be offered by colleges, universities, corporations, not-for-profit organizations, retailers, and other organizations that need to provide educational courses and training.
Many online courses offered by colleges and universities are set up to mirror the face-to-face arrangement of traditional courses, and follow, more or less, the same philosophy. The focus is on the content that is accessed and discussed by class members in an orderly fashion as the term progresses. Guidance is provided by an instructor who explains the material, provides feedback, and shows the best way to learn and perform so that students can achieve the course goals and outcomes.
The following are the benefits of cohort-based courses:
- They improve communication with peers
- The students have an orderly progression through the resources and activities
- They let the instructor provide proper guidance for performing well and achieving the desired course outcomes
- They are built on a template that can be copied across multiple sections
- They offer a sense of community and connection
While cohort-based courses can be popular and provide support for students, there are a few limitations. Disadvantages of cohort-based courses include:
- There can be slow progress of a student through the course
- There's some inflexibility with respect to assignments and the pace of the course
- There are difficulties in communicating with peers if students are in different time zones and do not have continuous access to the Internet
For many institutions, the benefits of cohort-based courses far outweigh the limitations, and the fact that course shells or templates once built can be copied, archived, and deployed makes it convenient to run many groups at the same time. Although it is true that courses for independent study can be copied and deployed, the user experience is not the same as that in a cohort-based course. In a well-run and successful cohort-based course, students have a feeling of community and support.