By Dani Babb, PhD
Canned courses are pre-developed courses that are given to you to change your name, photo, email address and go teach! For some educators, this is a dream. No hunting for a book, editing the course, creating content, rubrics, discussions, gradebooks, lectures, etc. For others, it is an impersonal nightmare. (Heads up: Some colleges will let you add your own special sauce into the class, just find out where it crosses the line into modification, because they won't like that).
So what do you do if you get a pre-developed course and you're asked to teach it? Enjoy the downtime during the creation phase (which often you're not paid for anyway, or it's in the contract but doesn't add to your salary), and find creative ways to get your points across. Schools do this to ensure that the student receives a consistent learning experience, and that they don't spend the first two weeks of each course hunting around for how to submit assignments. Instructional designers often favor creating a master template that gets modified when needed, then copying those master templates into course shells for instructors, which certainly saves time.
If you get a canned course, here are some things to do to begin teaching it:
Make the Obvious Modifications
Chances are, the course has a placeholder for instructor name, office hours, contact information, and maybe even due dates. Find out where all of those "fill in the blanks" are, and then proceed to do just that.. You may wish to create your own master table of assignment due dates as an announcement too. Don't forget to personalize your week 1 announcement as well and introduce yourself to your students.
Scrub the Course
Just because it was created by an instructional designer and is a template does not mean there aren't issues. Nearly every canned course I teach, I find an issue that needs to be addressed. Find out if you can make the change, or if it's a more systemic one, it should be handled through the course mater template. You can ask your boss or the instructional designer that copied it for you. Make sure you road test the links, URLs, videos and anything else week by week so your students don't run into issues. Save yourself the last minute stress and your students the frustration.
Personalization
Just because the course is canned doesn't mean your experience with the students should be. Send emails introducing yourself, share announcements, share videos if you choose, use student names in discussion responses and in feedback, and find a level of engagement that you know will help students master your course content and leave knowing something they can apply right away. I love to find out "why did you take my course and what do you hope to learn?" and then refer back to it throughout the discussions all semester. It's tedious, but students appreciate it.
Add Resources
Add resources that you find useful. But remember that they need to be ADA compliant, and they need to fall in line with school policy. Maybe your employer only allows open source material from their own open source library. Find this out first so you don't have to ask for forgiveness later.
Enjoy your canned course. I know it isn't "all you" and that part isn't fun. But you can use the time you would have spent writing lectures to engage with learners, and that IS fun and extremely rewarding!
About the author...
I am Dani Babb, PhD. I have been an online instructor since the inception of online education, using newsgroups back in the day! I am also the co-author of the first-ever book on getting jobs in online education, and the author of the second edition. I have made appearances all over network television on becoming an online instructor and making money while doing something you love - teaching others! My work is not about money first, it is about sharing our knowledge and personal fulfillment. The ability to work remotely and earn money doing it is icing on the cake.
I have over two decades of experience helping online faculty and professors find work in higher education and have seen the vast changes in the marketplace. Getting a job in today's online market is harder than ever, largely due to competition from more graduates, a move toward full time jobs, mergers and acquisitions. I network with administration and hiring managers to help find candidates for colleges, and my team offers exceptional services from curriculum vita writing to LinkedIn profiles written specifically to make it clear to the world that you are open to work as an online professor!
To ensure our team provides the best possible services to our clients, I research what deans and hiring managers are looking for at colleges and universities, frequently update our working processes, and provide timely information through blogs and through our online group
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