Customer Reviews

Conquering the Content: A Step-by-Step Guide to Online Course Design (Jossey-Bass Guides to Online Teaching and Learning)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
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I've found many of the Jossey-Bass books to be of high quality. Robin Smith's book does not disappoint. This slim volume is packed with excellent information that immediately gets to the "nuts and bolts" of creating an online course or developing an online course from a face-to-face course.

Many people think that crafting an online course is "easy"---you just put the same stuff on the 'net that you use in your classes, right? Um...no.

Smith does a great job of guiding the reader through the steps of developing a course that will be engaging and effective. She is careful to note various approaches to the process.

One of the most helpful aspects, I found, was the reader-friendly set up. Something that may benefit those who think they can just "throw something on the web" and call it online learning is the emphasis on Time. Conquering the Content does an excellent job of providing timelines and realistically approaching the amount of time each step may take.

I teach face-to-face, I've taught hybrid courses, and I have taken years of courses online. I'm currently in a program toward a Master Online Teacher Certificate, and Smith's book is in my "go-to" bag for every course I've taken. Her concise prose is straight-to-the-point and beneficial.

I highly recommend this book for educators, future educators, administrators, and stakeholders pondering implementing online learning; this book demonstrates the realities of online course development: my copy is highlighted and dog-eared---it does not just sit on a shelf and get dusty.

This book is a must for anyone teaching in an online environment. If you're just starting the transition from classroom to online, Robin M. Smith has it all there for you. Follow her exercises and recommendations and you can't go wrong. If you have been teaching online for a while, I guarantee you'll learn some new and very productive tricks. Every online instructor should read this book, and then keep it on the desk for easy reference.

Robin Smith presents helpful advice for instructors--neophytes and experienced--in organizing their course content for online delivery. Her methods are not limited to online instructors. Smith focuses on ideas like "chunk-ability" and gives several sample formats based on her ideas in the appendices that will help professors only teaching face-to-face.

If your desk looks as cluttered as mine, Smith's book will give you sound advice to make course content organization (or re-organization) something to look forward to rather than to avoid.

Thank you, thank you! This is the BEST. Hand-holding you through to conversion of your first e-learning course with workbook-style guidance. I looked high and low for this and now that I have it, it has exceeded my desires. This book is extremely well-thought-out. It's SO good that it's also short. Robin Smith knows her stuff and shares it! Don't despair - here is a bright light down a tunnel that doesn't look as long as it did before...

This is one of my go-to books in my "online learning" shelf because it addresses not only the magnificent vortex of an adjustment that is online teaching, but also because it offers some truly beneficial and practical suggestions for course preparation. There are terrific insights that will help you map out your approach to an online course from a pedagogical point of view, as well as avoiding certain technology pitfalls that can derail the process of converting your lecture materials to an appropriate online activity. While the book does not cover any specific learning management system, it does (correctly) assume that any major LMS will offer an html-based platform for arranging and presenting your materials, and is therefore helpful regardless of your delivery platform. The portion of the book that deals with new approaches to online course design serves as an equal challenge to those of us who also teach Face-to-Face, as it challenges our assumptions about teaching and learning.

Smith offers seven practical and insightful approaches to design, beginning with a change in our traditional approach to course design. A common mistake for first-time online instructors is to pile on the text-based handouts and expect students to read and absorb the material correspondence-course style, without providing a venue for reflection, discussion or discovery. While the book's scope focuses more on practical ways of arranging and chunking material for student consumption, one key question Smith raises about student information retention has haunted me for the past two semesters: "What if you knew your students were going to be tested six months following the completion of your course, and you would be held legally liable for any portion of the course the students did not remember? How would you teach differently? Would you?"

Much of this book also covers some incredibly practical and time-saving approaches to content organization and file management. A key concept Smith covers early on is to develop the scope of the entire course and use placeholder materials in advance, rather than focusing on the completion of one solid module or section. That sense of understanding the gestalt of an online course prior to filling in the nitty-gritty will force the designer to ask some of the bigger questions of content relevance, common and sequential learning processes and understanding outcomes rather than simply trying to shovel as much information into students' heads as possible. Knowing how to set up files and learning modules that correspond to appropriately "chunked" sections creates a saner workload for the instructor. I can say with confidence that the section on file naming conventions (p30-31) has saved me many hours of searching over the past year.

Online teaching and learning is a challenge, and an adjustment for both the instructor and student, and Smith's personal touches add human factor to the chapters. Smith offers her hard-earned wisdom generously, with wonderful ideas for personal productivity and professional growth as an instructor. No matter what you are struggling with - and developing an online course is certainly a struggle - you'll find help and relief in these pages.

This book is really helpful for the beginner distance learning instructional designer. The authors gives helpful tips including:
* Set up forums to avoid incessant e-mail questions. Other students can answer many of each other's questions.
* Set up one master list of links. Just by a few clicks on one file, you can check them prior to each term to check for bad links.
Thumbs up!

I am about to teach a hybrid class, and after reading the reviews here, I purchased this book. It is easy to read and to follow. I used her suggestions (and forms) to switch my lesson plans from "chalk and talk" to numbered modules that I can upload to Blackboard.
This book is extremely helpful as I make the transition using her proven techniques. I don't have to stumble because I have this guide.

I found that this book was an easy read that helped me answer some of the questions that I was wondering about designing an online educational module. I like how it has tasks that you can do as you read through that helps you understand the concept more, basically you can build your first module while reading the book.

This was a good overview with some great tips throughout. I would have liked it to be a little more specific but I don;t think that it would have been possible.

I would highly recommend it to anyone.