When designing or teaching an online course, it’s essential that your objectives, assessments, and instructional materials are aligned. This cohesive structure not only benefits you as an instructor but also helps students, fellow instructors, and even department chairs understand how each component of the course works together. While tight alignment is a highly effective way to design an online course, it does raise some important questions: What about students who want to dive deeper into a topic? Or those who need extra help to meet a particular objective? One solution is incorporating supplemental resources.
What Are Supplemental Resources?
Supplemental resources are nonrequired materials included in your course to enhance learning. These are materials students can choose to engage with, but they aren’t mandatory. Although adding supplemental resources can introduce some flexibility into your course design, they offer significant benefits when used thoughtfully. They can inspire deeper learning, increase student motivation, and provide support for those who need it. Below, we’ll explore how you can effectively select and use supplemental resources in your online course.
Selecting Supplemental Resources
Choosing supplemental resources is just as important as selecting any other course component. While these resources fall outside the traditional Course Design Triangle, you can still apply the same principles to guide your choices. Start by considering your course context—think about your students, the course’s position in the broader program, class size, and any other unique factors that influence your course. Here are some questions to help guide your decision-making:
- What are my students interested in?
- How do my students learn best?
- What are my students’ learning preferences?
- What content covered in other courses in my program can I review?
- What future content can I preview?
In addition to your course context, your learning objectives, assessments, and instructional materials all play a critical role in the selection of your supplemental resources. Supplemental resources can enhance these elements of your course, and can also add to the structure you’ve put in place for your students. For example, if you know about your students’ personal interests, you can include supplemental materials tailored to those interests. Or you can provide real-world examples and materials, which encourages learning and practical application.
Including Supplemental Resources
As with other elements of your online course, it’s also important that you add supplemental resources both purposefully and strategically. Students in your course should know that these resources are optional, not required. For example, you can label them as supplemental resources or group them together in their own module. Labeling can prove helpful if you want to include the resources as part of a specific module, whereas a stand-alone module might be better if you are going to use your supplemental resources throughout the entire course. There are many ways to include supplemental resources in your course, so consider what works best for you, your students, and your course.
Using Supplemental Resources to Encourage Learning
Supplemental resources can be a powerful tool for encouraging students to stay up-to-date in your field. By including resources that are related to your learning objectives, students can continue to explore topics that are of interest to them, which can increase their motivation in subsequent modules or courses in your field. In this respect, supplemental resources encourage exploratory learning and help students stay up-to-date with what’s occurring in the industry. And because they’re optional, students don’t have to stress about completing them. This can help you design for the margins; for example, students who might have mastery of a module’s objectives (or accelerate through them) have relevant resources in which they can engage if they choose.
Remember: Always clearly label your supplemental resources as such. Although these resources can encourage additional learning, if they’re not labeled as optional or supplemental, they can distract students who don’t want to read or take part in them. As with all aspects of the online classroom, clarity is key!
Using Supplemental Resources to Provide Support
Supplemental resources aren’t solely limited to encouraging exploratory or additional learning. You can also include supplemental resources in your course to help students who might struggle or need additional support. By doing so, you provide students who might otherwise find the course difficult with additional opportunities to succeed. This can take one of two forms:
- Proactive support: These are the resources you select during the instructional design process. It can also refer to materials you add during course enhancement to address areas where students have struggled in past offerings of the course. When providing this type of supplemental resources, you anticipate areas you think students might find tough or problematic.
- Reactive support: These are resources you disseminate during course delivery, typically in conjunction with formative assessment results. For example, if students struggle with an assessment and aren’t making progress toward learning objectives, you could send out supplemental resources to help them succeed.
Whether you choose proactive or reactive support, it’s essential that these resources remain optional. Supplemental resources should not replace structured course elements or scaffolding. Their goal is to offer extra help when students need it, not to act as a substitute for core learning materials.
Conclusion
Supplemental resources can be a powerful asset in your online course. When used thoughtfully, they motivate students, deepen engagement, and offer support for those who need it. By considering your course context and aligning supplemental materials with your course structure, you create opportunities for students to explore topics further and receive the support they need to succeed. With clear labeling and strategic integration, supplemental resources can enhance the learning experience without overwhelming your students.
