In Atul Gawande’s recent book The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, he explains that when we work in high-pressure fields with many details, it is easy to get overwhelmed and make simple mistakes that are foundational to the task at hand. We often see this phenomenon in online learning, where instructors with vast knowledge of their discipline may spend hours on what readings to include in the course, but fail to upload the syllabus. This is why Gawande suggests the power of the checklist.
Course checklists serve as a great reminder of what key components need to be accomplished in an online learning environment before a course goes live for students. Impact (formerly EesySoft) can help showcase these checklists through targeted messaging, offer support on how to complete these tasks, as well as display insights to inform individual departments of individuals that may require further assistance completing tasks.
Some institutions are facing challenges with their course storage size. A checklist can provide reminders of the best ways to save and present course material to ensure the course size remains within the allotted limits. The campaign Organizing Course Material to Reduce Course Size for institutions using Blackboard Learn is a great campaign to run in conjunction with a checklist messaging campaign to ensure that faculty are guided through this process. This campaign contains both messages, as well as support articles and videos.
Course Copy is also a popular tool in most major LMS platforms that is important to include as part of a beginning of term course checklist. Impact can help direct users to the course copy feature where institutions can offer links to support users and ensure course copy success.
Keep Course Content Relevant and Compliant
Regardless of your LMS, a course syllabus is an important feature that should be included on your course checklist. Impact can assist you with messaging surrounding the syllabus, include support articles for how to complete it, and monitor the tool to help ensure that it is being widely used by faculty.
Additionally, it is critical to remind faculty that accessibility should be central to their course construction. Reminding faculty members to use their institution chosen accessibility tool can be done through Impact messaging. Impact also has instructional designer created Ally campaigns available for Blackboard and Canvas users using the Ally accessibility tool.
One area of a checklist that is easy to forget, but one of the most important items to include, is a reminder for faculty to make their course available to students. While the method varies by LMS, making a course visible at the correct time helps cut down on unnecessary support tickets from students at an already busy time of year.
Course Content and Availability
Campaign to prepare and publish your course in Canvas
For those institutions that would like to focus on elevating their Canvas Courses, check out the Canvas Course Evaluation Checklist v2.0! This checklist is designed to support a variety of course creators and is a great starting point for institutions to make a copy and customize it to meet their institution needs.
Checklists are critical to the success of your online courses to ensure consistency across disciplines and necessary features for student success. Remember, you do not need to feature every element of a course checklist in your Impact messaging, but highlighting the critical elements can decrease support tickets and increase user satisfaction.