Why Use Templates?

What is a Fully Developed Course Template?

A fully developed template provides an instructor with all the content they need to teach a course. It can be used from semester to semester and copied into a course for any instructor to use.

Why use templates? What are the benefits? See some of the reasons below...

1 QUALITY & CONSISTENCY

AND OVERSIGHT

An online template:

gives a department greater oversight over the quality of its courses
increases the consistency across sections, and
helps to reduce student complaints over differing levels of quality, content, expectations, and workload.

Because a template can be used over and over, more resources can go into it, raising the bar on the quality of experience for the students.

EXAMPLE: A department has an online course with 20 sections each semester. It often hears complaints from students about how much harder a certain section is compared to another or how one section's content is much better than another. The department decides to create a template that can be implemented across sections. As a result, the department has a lot less student complaints. They also have much more confidence in the quality of each student's experience.

circle with two halfs and a double arrow pointing to the halves

2 EXPERTISE

Templates allow departments to choose their own experts to create the course content. This means students are being exposed to content that has been created by the experts in the field. Sometimes this means one instructor creates the entire template, other times it means several faculty contribute to different parts of the course providing lectures and other course content.

EXAMPLE: A department runs 10 online sections of their introductory course each semester. They want students to hear from experts in each area of the department's discipline. Eight of their faculty and instructors come together to create material for the course, each taking two modules of the 16 module course. The faculty create lectures, content, and assessments. In addition, they create short videos to share about their research that help to inspire interest in their discipline.

simple icon of a brain inside a lightbulb showing expertise

3 TIME SAVINGS

& NO ENROLLMENT HOLDS

Templates save time and resources. Instead of reinventing the wheel each time a course is taught, the same course can be used over and over by many instructors without going through the development and approval process. Additionally, courses using fully designed templates can automatically open for enrollment since the course has already been approved.

EASY TO HAND OFF: Online templates are also easy to share. A quick course copy and the instructor is ready to go!

EXAMPLE: A department has a course that is taught online 4 times each semester by varying instructors. Each time the course is assigned to be taught by someone new the course cannot open for enrollment until it is fully developed and approved (usually taking 6-12 months). In addition, many hours and resources are put into designing and creating each online course, and about half the time the course doesn't get taught because the instructor doesn't end up having time or isn't fully committed and the department loses enrollments. The department decides to implement a course template to save the time and the resources of the university (instructors, instructional technologists, instructional designers, etc.). It is also very pleased that its courses are filling because students can enroll right away in its high demand courses.

4 REMOVE

BOTTLENECKS

Online templates help to remove bottlenecks. Universities and departments often have high demand courses that students must take to proceed through their major or to graduate. Online templates allow these high demand courses to be taught immediately without waiting for development or approval.

EXAMPLE: A university doesn't have enough sections of Intro to Political Science, a course that needs to be taken by a majority of students. To reduce the bottleneck, an online template of the course is created. As demand increases, students are able to get the much needed course credit with a high quality and engaging online course.

bottleneck with red dots going through and an arrow at the bottom

5 SHOWCASE A DEPARTMENT

(OR UNIVERSITY)

A high quality course provides an opportunity for a department to showcase their major to potential students.

Using a well developed template for courses like General Education Courses (Gen Eds), that students typically take their first year or as concurrent students, provides an opportunity to introduce students to the department and possibly pique student interest (maybe even enough for them to consider a major or minor in the subject matter).

EXAMPLE: A department decides to create a template for their introductory class that is both a Gen Ed and concurrent course. They want to provide students with a quality online course that is interesting and engaging and represents what students might study in the major. They select their best lecturers and content experts to provide short presentations for each module and assign one of their faculty to put together meaningful and engaging activities and assessments. They make sure the course is easy to navigate and has many avenues for instructor to student and student to student interaction. The course becomes one of the most recommended Gen Ed courses at the university.

screen with course and people in front saying wow and nice

This course content is offered under a CC Attribution Non-Commercial Share AlikeLinks to an external site. license. Content in this course can be considered under this license unless otherwise noted.