Crafting Your Online Course with Gale

What do you want your students to learn?

Online, these questions add additional structure to how you can build learning modules with your LMS. Whether it be “How did the ancient Greeks communicate with each other?” or “Why did Sigmund Freud develop his theory of dreams?”, each objective and its related questions can make up a folder or lesson that have subsequent content and activities. If you create a logical order for these modules or lessons to tell a story, students will be able to answer your learning questions and achieve objectives in a purposeful way.

How will my students achieve the learning objectives?

Having an accessibility mindset includes making sure content is digestible and functional for all learners, including students with disabilities, but also gives an opportunity for students to learn in different ways with multiple perspectives.

What resources will support student learning?

You then can determine how much content you need to fill out each module of your course, bearing in mind that a 16-week course consists of 8.5 hours of work each week. Check out this handout about time on task for online learning by Rochester Institute of Technology.

How will my students achieve the learning objectives?

Developing course activities is quite different when you transition to an online environment, especially when facilitating discussions and hands-on activities. It’s important to be mindful of how social interaction makes a difference in how your students will engage and critically think about the content you’ve crafted.

How will I create an online learning experience?

It’s important to build your course like a story, or even a video game, with it separated into modules that represent chapters or levels in a game that have opportunities not only for recall but challenging critical-thinking activities. In doing this, students can remain engaged with the content that you’ve crafted.

How do you do this? Think of each module of your course being composed of the following components that each represent milestones of your course:

• “XXX Course: Online Summer 2022”
• Module 1: Sub-Topic or Sub-Course Objectives
• Learning Objectives
• Key Learning Questions
• Content Shopping List:
  • 3 15-minute chunked video lectures
  • 2‒3 text documents (short form and long form)
  • 2 videos and graphic or illustration
• Activity Shopping List:
  • 1 discussion topic (self-response and peer-to-peer response)
  • 1 weekly reflection with formative assessment question
  • 1 completion of inquiry project component

Gale Ready-to-Go: You can use Gale Academic resources to completely build out your modules! Here’s an example of one meeting the criteria from above. Keep in mind that most Gale academic resources have unlimited, simultaneous user access, LMS integration, persistent links, and discovery services instilled right into the platforms.

            Critical LGBTQ Movements in America: Online Summer 2022

            Module 1: The Beginning Riot: Stonewall

• • Learning Objectives: Students will evaluate the events, attitudes, and behaviors that led to the Stonewall riots, and how these attributes culminated to become part of the LGBTQ movement in the 1960s.        
  • Key Learning Questions: Who were the key contributors to the Stonewall riots? What were the pivotal events and developments that led to the riots? Why did the Stonewall riots occur?
  • Content Shopping List: Link these sources in your LMS system. Have students use the annotation, highlighting, and note-taking features to self-regulate through their learning.

• • • 3 15-minute chunked video lectures
    • 2‒3 text documents:
      • Chapter 2: Gale eBook Being LGBTQ in America: LGBTQ Social Movements in America, 1^st Edition
      • “The Stonewall Riots,” Lesbian Herstory Archives, Gale Primary Sources
      • “Chronicling the LGBT Rights Movement Since the Stonewall Riots,” National Public Radio, Gale Academic OneFile
    • 2‒3 videos:
      • Video: “Perfect Harmony Chorus Remembers Stonewall Riots,” Local Broadcast Video Content, Gale Academic OneFile
      • Video: “Stonewall Uprising,” Public Broadcasting Service, Gale Academic OneFile
      • Cartoon (newspaper): “Stonewall Riots,” Archives of Sexuality and Gender, Gale Primary Sources

Activity Shopping List:

• 1 discussion topic:
  • What prompted the Stonewall riots in New York City, and how were they looked back on as a movement for LGBTQ rights?
• 1 weekly reflection:
  • How did the content you reviewed about the Stonewall riots make a difference in your understanding of their monumental influences on LGBTQ rights in America?
• Inquiry project component:
  • What questions do you have related to the beginning of LGBTQ in America? Use the Gale Primary Sources Topic Finder to derive keywords associated with “movements in LGBTQ in America” to develop three new research questions.
  • Use the Gale Digital Scholar Lab to build a content set around one of your research questions and corresponding keywords.