Instruction is the heart of any educational journey. While learning objectives outline what students should achieve and assessments track their progress, instructional materials guides students on that path. In an online setting, instructional materials come in many forms—like video lectures, interactive lessons, and e-books—giving students the tools to move from confusion to mastery. Let’s explore strategies to ensure your instruction engages students, aligns with your course goals, and supports their success.
Align Materials to Goals and Needs
First and foremost, as a course developer or instructor, it’s critical that your instruction is aligned with your learning objectives and assessments. If your learning objectives state what students will be able to do by the end of a course or module, and your assessments are what will measure student progress toward mastery of those objectives, the instructional materials should prepare students to succeed on those assessments. By writing or selecting your materials with these other course elements in mind, you help ensure that they are relevant and appropriate for your course.
Additionally, it’s important that your instructional materials are both accessible and copyright compliant. When you create materials that are accessible, you ensure that students who require the use of assistive technology can access them without barriers. On a similar note, creating or selecting materials that are copyright compliant helps ensure that your course doesn’t violate the copyright protections of any content you choose to use. This isn’t just a legal concern; by doing this, you set a good academic example for your students. Consider using instructional materials that are reader-friendly on multiple devices. Aslanian, Clinefelter, and Magda (2019) note that “fifty-six percent of online college students use a smartphone or tablet to complete at least some of their online course-related activities” (p. 32), making it more important than ever for your instruction to be designed with multiple platforms in mind. By ensuring that students can access your instruction on their smartphones, tablets, and across different operating systems, you help eliminate any barriers to entry that might exist.
Chunk Your Materials
One of the easiest strategies you can employ to maximize student engagement is to “chunk” your instructional materials. Chunking involves dividing large lessons into smaller, more digestible segments. Just like phone numbers are easier to remember in groups (e.g., “123-456-7890”), smaller pieces of content help students focus better and retain information. Chunking also:
- Creates natural breaks: Many online learners juggle work and family, so manageable segments fit better into their schedules.
- Reinforces learning objectives: Breaking content into small sections helps you align each part with a specific objective, reinforcing learning step by step.
- Reduces cognitive overload: Smaller pieces of content prevent students from becoming overwhelmed, making it easier for them to learn effectively.
Create Opportunities for Interaction
When you begin developing online courses, it can be tempting to include written lectures, recordings of live lectures, and so on—everything that’s worked well in the face-to-face classroom. While there’s nothing wrong with these sorts of materials, it’s important to note that, unlike in a face-to-face classroom, you can’t be certain that students are engaging with the materials. One way you can do this is by creating interactive lessons. There are a number of tools to assist you with creating interactive activities (some of which are built into popular learning management systems, even), and most are customizable to suit your purpose. Interactive content—like quizzes, click-through lessons, and self-checks—can bridge this gap and encourage students to engage actively and monitor their own progress.
Mayer (2009), in a book on principles of multimedia learning, notes that “People learn better when a multimedia message is presented in user-paced segments rather than as a continuous unit” (p. 175). With that idea in mind, consider replacing e-books that students can scroll through with interactive lessons that they can click through or supplement lessons with self-check questions, click-to-reveal notes with supplemental materials, and other strategies for letting students check their progress, interact with the content, and more. In addition to helping students stay engaged by giving them something to do, these kinds of activities also help to ensure that students are ready to move from one topic to the next. Because a self-check asks students to monitor their progress, activities like these serve as a valuable form of formative assessment.
Pro Tip: Use interactive lessons to individualize learning by directing students to additional resources based on their performance.
Utilize Multimedia
One popular strategy for increasing engagement with instructional materials is to utilize multimedia. While this can take multiple forms, for our purposes, we’re going to look at the use of things like images, graphs, and charts that work alongside your written materials. As you might imagine, supplementing your text with these types of media can help engage students by drawing their attention to and reinforcing major points. For instance, if your written lecture for an education class includes a discussion of one teacher’s experience using pre- and post-assessment data to measure student achievement, including a graph illustrating that data can prove helpful. Or, for example, if a video lecture for an architecture or construction course includes a discussion on the Greeks’ use of the pediment, showing examples of a pediment can help reinforce the concept being discussed.
While using multimedia in this manner can help reinforce these important points, it’s important to note than if you’re going to use them, you need to make sure they’re used strategically and not whimsically. Multimedia enhances instruction when used thoughtfully. According to Mayer’s principles of multimedia learning:
- Combine words and visuals to boost comprehension (Multimedia Principle).
- Place related text and images together to aid understanding (Spatial Contiguity Principle).
- Present words and images simultaneously to improve retention (Temporal Contiguity Principle).
However, avoid decorative visuals that don’t serve a clear educational purpose—they can distract students and increase cognitive load.
Conclusion
Instructional materials plays a vital role in your online course. It’s the vehicle students use to gain the knowledge, skills, and confidence they need to succeed on your assessments, making it critical that these elements are designed in a way that hooks students’ attention and prepares them for what’s to come in your course and beyond. With that in mind, here are a few takeaways from this article:
- Align instruction with learning objectives and assessments to stay focused on student outcomes.
- Chunk content into smaller sections for better engagement and retention.
- Incorporate interaction to make learning active and measurable.
- Use multimedia wisely to highlight key points, without overwhelming students.
- Ensure materials are accessible, copyright-compliant, and device-friendly to maximize student participation.
References
Bodie, G. D., Powers, W. G., & Fitch-Hauser, M. (2006). Chunking, priming and active learning: Toward an innovative and blended approach to teaching communication-related skills. Interactive Learning Environments, 14(2), 119–135.
Clinefelter, D. L., Aslanian, C. B., & Magda, A. J. (2019). Online college students 2019: Comprehensive data on demands and preferences. Louisville, KY: Wiley edu, LLC.
Mayer, R. E. (2009). Multimedia learning (2nd ed.). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
