Textbook Authorship

Finding and Choosing Media Assets

In my last post I discussed how to develop a shell for your online course--the structure and conceptual framework for the course you want to teach. You have your units, modules, and headings, along with learning objectives for each module and section in your outline. Now, finding the right media assets to plug into your online course shell is part art and part the luck of discovery.

Recall that media assets include web sites, documents, podcasts, audio files, webcasts, videos, animations, photos, other images, or any of a host of specific files, such as maps or graphics. The best way to find these assets is to start with links you already know or that have been recommended to you by colleagues, and those that are available through your institution, such as library subscriptions to online resources. Then move on to the keyword or key phrase search, preferably trying a variety of search engines.

Evaluating assets for inclusion in your course should be based on the following criteria:

1) Does it directly advance the learner's potential ability to fulfill the stated learning objective for that topic or section? Is the content at the right intellectual level for your audience?
2) Is the source known, credible, authoritative, authentic, literate, accurate, and reliable? Does it cite sources?
3) Can you use it or link to it legally without permission; or can you get permission? (more on this in the next post)
4) Is the web site or link stable and secure? Is it current or routinely updated?
5) Depending on context you also may want to ask, Is it free? Is it free of advertising? Does it require registration or subscription?

Web sites to favor include large or well-known national or international organizations; academic associations; federal and state government sites; online archives of newspaper, journal, or research articles; and open-access college- and university-based repositories.

Web sites to avoid include students' and instructors' pages; personal home pages other than your own; unarchived articles (which tend to disappear); commercial sites with pop-up ads or registration requirements; pages with internal links that are broken or lead to inappropriate content; sites with offensive or salacious content or undeclared bias.

Collect your finds into a bookmark folder, annotating each URL and categorizing it for placement in a section in your course outline. The bookmark folder will help you conveniently hyperlink your narrative text or pedagogy to your assets, or, alternatively, to hyperlink your assets to the learning objectives and headings in your course outline. Providing narrative and pedagogical contexts for your media assets will be the subject of a future post.

You no doubt will find far more resources than you can use in your course. As you develop your bookmark folder, try to choose the right number of assets to correspond with your predicted "time on task" for students to get through a module and satisfy the learning objectives. You may wish to apply the traditional industry standard of a maximum of 50 pages of reading per college course per week, and then reduce this to account for the time needed to study real-time media assets such as audio and video.

Many resources you find will not be conveniently available to you because of permission issues, the subject of my next post.

Labels: media assets, online courses, online textbooks, textbook development

posted by Mary Ellen Lepionka @ 1:07 PM