Course Design Tips for Your J-Term or Summer Course

This article will help guide faculty in the design of courses offered in shorter term lengths such as J-term and summer.

Tips for Designing Your J-Term or Summer Course

Designing a J-term or summer course that is condensed into fewer weeks brings special challenges, especially if the course is offered in a fully online, blended or flexible format. Below are course design tips that will enhance your ability to efficiently facilitate a condensed course and improve the student experience.

Group work

• Group work is tricky with condensed classes. Consider the following:
  • use synchronous sessions for group work
  • give very clear instructions on any group assignments
  • if it's an asynchronous class, give adequate time for students to meet to complete projects and have groups submit drafts/segments so you can help keep them on track
  • honestly: avoid group work if possible, or only do one group assignment

Grading and projects

• Consider due dates and whether students need your feedback in order to continue with an assignment or take the next step in the course
• Typically, due dates are 1-2 times per week. What is the faculty's capacity to turn around assignments so students can make use of feedback?

Activities

• Resist the urge to put a ton of readings and videos into the class
• Consider an auto-graded quiz in the first few days (for attendance and to catch anyone who hasn't already logged in to the class)

Student support and class facilitation

• Plan to respond to emails within 24 hours
• A Q&A discussion board is highly recommended
• Module 0: add something interactive so you can see right away who hasn't logged in to the class. There's no time to waste in these condensed classes
• Be very active in the first 3-4 days and through the first major assignment. If students get behind, it's really hard to catch up