Would You Rather... Have Lesson Templates Provided For You or Create Your Own?

[courtney_cohron]

As a district instructional technology coach I have had several teachers ask for course / lesson templates to work off of. Sometimes the idea around "designing" a lesson page or structuring an entire course can seem overwhelming. Recently I had the opportunity to visit a school district where they had teachers build quality course lessons using a standard design template. Once each lesson had been built it went through a critiquing process that involved several people (ranging from curriculum director to instructional coach to principal to teacher). Once approved each lesson became available for all teachers in the district to use for that specific grade level / department etc... The district I visited had a detailed roll out plan starting with one specific grade level in one specific content area and over the course of several years had completely developed high quality digital lessons for their teachers. I am seeking feedback on whether or not you would rather have lesson / course templates provided for you (as a starting point) or if you would rather just create your own? 

[dhulsey]

I prefer writing my own stuff, but I am here on the Canvas community at 11:00 PM, so I suspect there might be a correlation between my preference and my frequenting of the community.

However, I wonder if it might help your faculty if they were introduced to some content development tools and some examples of what can be made with those tools. If your district uses Microsoft Office, for instance, you might check out Office Mix​, which is a free PowerPoint add in that helps produce interactive lessons that write to the Canvas grade book: Setting up Office Mix with Instructure Canvas​.

[kona]

Personally I don't advocate for recreating the wheel, so I'd appreciate seeing/being able to access a template. Yet, I rarely use something I find without some significant tweaking/adjusting/etc.

So I guess my answer is that I'd like access to the template, but wouldn't want to be required to use it exactly as is and would want to be able to edit it for my personal use.

[lfidler]

I agree with you, I'd like the ability to tweak as well.

[cadatko]

I think templates would be an awesome idea! Many faculty are overwhelmed by the choices they have in the RCE, and having several standard templates that don't require HTML knowledge would help a lot. We've created a few, but it would be nice to have 'fields' that faculty could use to minimize any issues they might have with templates that we create for them where they may change some of the HTML by accident...

I would love to see a template with columns and various options for tabbed content, accordions, etc. While it's easy enough for me to do this, it would be awesome to be able to give faculty the option to choose from some predetermined layouts.

[jomontuori]

Thanks for bringing this up,  @courtney_cohron . You've inspired me to create some template Pages and Modules and share them with faculty in the Commons. Some will use the templates as is, and some will modify them to their own liking, as  @kona ​ suggests.

I think the important point is that templates can provide a sense of what's possible, which in itself is instructive.

[DaleDrees]

I think course/lesson templates definitely has some advantages and would be a great resource for faculty and ultimately the students. I think if you had a lesson that went through a critiquing process of subject matter experts and Instructional Designers and aligned with the course/weekly outcomes you should end up with a very well designed course. What a great advantage to someone who might be just starting online and then they could focus more on the delivery of the course and being active in the course. I agree with  @kona , I don’t advocate for recreating the wheel!

[swilson34]

I think it's a good idea to have them available. It would make it easier for our less experienced faculty to get a course which the students can navigate easily. I would allow considerable freedom to change it though, I don't want to limit our talented faculty. I think there is always a segment that will decide not to use them as well.

[kmeeusen]

Well, that is not an easy question to answer!

For myself, I think not. I am very very good at creating content and also very picky so like  @kona ​ I might use a template, but I would spend a lot of time tweaking it. Most of the times that I have encountered templates, they are not typically flexible enough to tweek to my satisfaction.

For my faculty, yes! We already create some templates for our faculty - Home pages, modules index with module organization, Module content placeholders, Syllabus and some content pages (preformatted Introductions and Learning Objectives page for each module) all based on the QM Rubric Standards. Several varieties of these too! Very few faculty like to use the templates, and for many of the ones who do, I have found that our department must help them tweek them to fit their preferences. Everybody loves a template as long as it's their own and fits their workflow. Why do I want templates for my faculty, because many of them are simply terrible at course design! Would I be able to enforce the use of template at my college - Oh Heck No!

KLM

[lfidler]

Yes, i too would rather not recreate the wheel each time I have to write a lesson/resource, etc...it would be hugely helpful to have lesson and resource templates available for usage.