Of course, being clear needs to be supplemented by other principles as well, the of which are repetition and adding the human element. I have come to realize over the week that the usual amount of repetition in normal classes may be harder to achieve in online classes, with students sometimes choosing to engage in activities that only affect their grades. Using an introduction, an instructor reflection and a summary page to repeat the important concepts and learning goals may be a good idea for this reason. The addition of instructor reflection and introduction videos or informal announcement videos may also help add to the human element of your course and keep engagement higher in a course. This is especially important because it is much harder to stay engaged in an online class than a face-to-face class in my own experience.
Course Design
In our first week as Academic Technology Scholars, we have learned about the basics of course design with a two-pronged approach. The first prong was learning how to use Canvas effectively to design and present content in a course. The second was learning about pedagogical tools when face-to-face learning is not available or ideal.
During the week, the concept that really jumped out at me was the concept of clarity. Since the faculty will no longer have the benefit of face-to-face class time to clarify any instructions or concepts, it is important that the instructions and information on the course page are very clear. Note that this does not mean that online classes should follow the exact same structure as the face-to-face equivalents.
This is why the faculty should organize their course into clearly defined modules, stick to a naming convention throughout the course for course material, clearly state the learning objectives and make use of the calendar feature in Canvas to set clear due dates.
Overall, I hope that I can assist the faculty migrate their classes to Canvas and/or to an online format by helping them think about presenting the course material they already have and creating new material that would make their course more engaging and easy to follow in a way that follows the principles I talked about. As a student, I always enjoyed the classes that were made the most engaging by faculty, regardless of their subject or focus, so I am hoping to do what I can to help the faculty design their courses in a way that is clear and engaging even when teaching online.