When teaching an online accelerated course, how do you make essential course information stand out from all the rest of the course content? The first week in my course can be overwhelming. In addition to reading the introductory chapters of the course text and participating in interactive lectures, students are provided with a course tour that reviews the syllabus, explains how to participate in discussions, and submit assignments. They also have video tutorials on how to use the text editor, links to web tools that will be used in the course so they can create the necessary free accounts, tutorials on how to use the web tools and how to embed assignments created with the tools in Blackboard. And of course, I want them to introduce themselves to their peers and get to know one another! Important administrative tasks are mixed in with course content, producing a visually overwhelming amount of content for the first week.
What is your experience with a “week zero” module?
During a virtual discussion with colleagues, it was recommended that I try a “week zero” module. The idea behind week zero was to place the essential course information for functioning in the online course in a separate module, so that week one contains only course content. After trying this idea in a blended course and a fully online course, I found a slight reduction in the number of emails expressing confusion about what needed to be done, only to be replaced by a slight increase in the number of emails asking questions that were addressed in the separate module. This suggested to me that those students didn’t enter the week zero module.
What ideas do you have for making sure that students view and understand the information provided to them to increase their success and minimize their frustration [… and mine 
]. I look forward to your response.
At Boise State University, we have just created an online course template that we are importing into empty course shells before faculty developing online courses start actually building them. The template includes a Module 0 with a welcome video from the instructor, syllabus quiz, links to student support, technology information, Blackboard resources, a pre-course questionnaire, and an introductions discussion forum.
We introduced the template a few weeks ago to faculty in a professional development course, letting them know the template was set up to help their courses meet Quality Matters standards. Time will tell whether the template and the Module 0 are working as intended!
I build an orientation week (or week 0) into all the courses I design. During orientation, students review the course overview materials (student success guide, syllabus, calendar, etc), answer a “lite” discussion question (something about themselves, what they want out of the course) and fill out their profiles. It’s a combination of a lot of navigation and a lot of socializing. I’ve considered putting in a quiz about the course – eg how many times a week should you be logging on – and if they get higher than a certain grade they can go on, but if not, they have to reread/review – but I’m a bit chicken about trying it out..
Hiya,
My institution has toyed with the idea of making a “Getting Started” area as a compulsory refresher when students enter the course for the first time. ONce they read through that, the student then answers a silly little quiz (“what is the main colour on the linked page?” “when is the first assignment due?”) which then allows their materials to become active. They are then forced to engage with the administrative materials before getting to the study materials.