The Summer Sessions Online course development training is an entirely asynchronous online bCourses site that any faculty or staff member can join at any time. While it is designed primarily for instructors developing a fully online course for the Summer Sessions, it can be used by any instructor to help them with developing a course map and instructional materials for mixed modality or in-person environments.
In this course, we will:
Identify unique characteristics of online instruction, highlighting their implications for student learning.
Identify effective strategies for designing and delivering online and hybrid courses that foster student engagement and achievement.
Develop a structured course map that aligns learning objectives with assessments and activities.
Utilize a bCourses template to design a homepage and overall course layout that is organized, accessible, easy for students to navigate, and creates a welcoming environment.
Anyone! It is open to all Berkeley faculty and staff to self-enroll in bCourses.
If you are teaching an online Summer Sessions course for the first time, we recommend that you enroll in this course. The materials will walk you through the process of designing and developing a course and include many tools and resources that will support you through this work.
If you are a faculty member teaching in Summer Sessions, we would like you to complete this course, and we expect that it will take you anywhere from 2 to 4 hours to do so. You could spend more time with any of the course materials, and we acknowledge that different instructors may want to spend greater time with some of the course activities than others.
Note that anyone who accesses this course can pick and choose among the modules to find information they need. Completing the course is primarily recommended for instructors who are new to teaching a Summer Sessions course; everyone else can optionally engage with any of the activities as they so choose.
It is open year-round all the time! This is an entirely asynchronous course, so you can access, engage, and complete the materials at your own pace. For faculty teaching Summer Sessions, we encourage you to complete this course as a prerequisite before signing up for a 1:1 consultation with an instructional designer in the Center for Teaching and Learning.
Since this course is focused on course design, we recommend you enroll and complete it with enough time to schedule an individual consultation with a CTL instructional designer and develop at least the first four modules of your course one week before your course start date. The start dates vary by Summer Session term and you can review the exact dates of each term on the Summer Sessions website
That being said, you are welcome to join the course and meet with an instructional designer at any point during the summer.
Follow the link to self-enroll in bCourses.
Reach out to teaching@berkeley.edu if you have any questions about this course.
