ITC: 22 – Exploring the Content and Activities Standards for an Online Course Review

Your course can be highly stimulating or extremely boring that is up to you. You are responsible for every element that makes up your course. Fortunately, there is some research available to help guide you on your journey to creating an informative and engaging course.

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In this episode, we are continuing our exploration of online quality reviews. We are continuing to look at a specific tool called OSCQR. It is a rubric for reviewing online courses.

We will be focusing on the 8 Content and Activities standards.

OSCQR Standards

By attending to these standards, you can create a course that provides engaging and informative content and activities. Simple principles will help ensure content and activities can be accessed by everyone. The specific standards include:

29. Course offers access to a variety of engaging resources that facilitate communication and collaboration, deliver content, and support learning and engagement.
30. Course provides activities for learners to develop higher-order thinking and problem-solving skills, such as critical reflection and analysis.
31. Course provides activities that emulate real-world applications of the discipline, such as experiential learning, case studies, and problem-based activities.
32. Where available, Open Educational Resources, free, or low-cost materials are used.
33. Course materials and resources include copyright and licensing status, clearly stating permission to share where applicable.
34. Text content is available in an easily accessed format, preferably HTML. All text content is readable by assistive technology, including a PDF or any text contained in an image.
35. A text equivalent for every non-text element is provided (“alt” tags, captions, transcripts, etc.).
36. Text, graphics, and images are understandable when viewed without color. Text should be used as a primary method for delivering information.
37. Hyperlink text is descriptive and makes sense when out of context (avoid using “click here”).

In this episode, I will discuss each of these standards.

Resources

Here are some of the resources I talked about in this episode:

• • OSCQR Rubric
  • OSCQR – Content and Activities Standards
  • OER Commons
  • Untagged PDF Being Read by a Screen Reader
  • JAWS Screen Reader
  • ITC: 3 – Using Open Educational Resources in the Classroom
  • ITC: 19 – Exploring the Overview and Information Standards for an Online Course Review
  • ITC: 20 – Exploring the Technology and Tools Standards for an Online Course Review
  • ITC: 21 – Exploring the Design and Layout Standards for an Online Course Review

This episode of the podcast was put together with the assistance of:

• Music credit: Purple Planet
• Editing assistance: Lost Recording Studio
• Sponsored product: Audible
• Photo by Marta Branco from Pexels

Adapted from: The OSCQR Rubric, Dashboard, and Process are made available by Online Learning Consortium, Inc. (OLC) under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC By 4.0).