You’ve always had to make choices about what content to deploy in your course, even in the pre-digital world. Most courses are a mix of curated materials and original content. Often the original content serves to orient or guide the learner through the curated content.
Your choices were about physical things—not only books (to purchase or put on library reserve) but also printed pieces, handouts, or curated coursepacks. Outside of print, your content might have been in the form of overhead transparencies or on the good old fashioned chalkboard. All in the physical world.
Then, you started posting content to your own website and your learning management system (LMS). Maybe you even connected directly with your students via social media. PowerPoint presentations replaced your acetates, and interactive whiteboards gave you more power at the front of your classroom.
Though the formats changed, you still made the same types of decisions. The same holds true when you want to share your content beyond your own classroom.
If you are new to sharing your content, the easiest way to start is by creating a blog. Here’s why:
- Most blogging platforms are free, so there’s little risk. In my opinion, WordPress is the best and easiest for narrative content (I use it for my own website), though there are tons of other blogging platforms out there.
- Just start writing. Don’t worry about images and video yet—start with something that’s easy for you. For most educators, that’s probably narrative content.
- They allow for links and tagging, so you can sequence and contextualize your content for the student.
- They can handle all kinds of media easily, should you wish to add different kinds of digital content. I find Tumblr to be the best for non-narrative content (see my Tumblr site for example).
Narrative content
You are a guide, seeking to tell a story. You can build that story by writing your own original material, but you may also be curating other works. Sometimes someone else can tell the story better than you. Use links—they can enhance your work, help you prove a point, or allow for some additional exploration along the way. Or, they can simply offer examples. But it’s up to you to stitch it together into something coherent. Organizing and sequencing the story is one of your most important roles as an instructor.
What about those students who want to go further? Do you provide them with a roadmap to get there? Other suggested pieces? This may apply only your top students. Incite an action, spark discovery. This can be as rewarding to you as it is to them.
Visual content
Your content may require visuals, or at least be enhanced by them. If you are accustomed to PowerPoint, then I recommend SlideShare to propagate them more widely. Here are a couple great examples of simple visual presentations using SlideShare: One on curating educational content by Georgy Cohen at Suffolk University and one on developing a content strategy at the institutional level by Kate Brodock at Syracuse University.
Video content
You may feel that you are a better lecturer than writer, that your strength is your classroom presentations. Maybe videos or podcasts are the best medium for you. Salman Khan started Khan Academy with modest videos when he was tutoring his cousin, and it grew into a much larger venture.
You don’t need much equipment to get started, and there are options for those who are camera-shy. For example, here’s a brief video that I produced using PowerPoint visuals, recorded with QuickTime. You can also check out these really simple, effective algebra instruction videos by my friend John Redden at College of the Sequoias.
The asynchronous nature of video can be really good for the learner, who can pause, stop, rewind, and revisit with much greater ease than in the synchronous world of the classroom. And, services like YouTube, Vimeo, and Wistia make video very easy to share.
Audio content
The same holds true for podcasts. As a musician, I’m more comfortable with audio than video, so that works better for me when I want to add the emotion that doesn’t come through in a written blog post. Here’s an example of a podcast I recorded with GarageBand, and posted on one of my favorite web tools, SoundCloud. They even do a little primer for educators: SoundCloud for Education. You can capture ideas directly on SoundCloud and they are easy to organize and share—kind of a “YouTube for audio.”
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Considering your audience(s), what will it take to get the idea across? What will it take to make your content useful to others?
For more tips on Good Content, click here for previous installments of the Good Content Series.
About Michael Boezi
Michael Boezi is an Independent Advisor and Content Strategist, specializing in helping authors and publishers make the Shift to Digital. He is a longtime publishing veteran who has always been at the forefront of the industry by applying the lessons of the traditional to the process of innovation, mixing the ideal with the practical. He was Vice President of Content and Community at Flat World Knowledge, where he was responsible for all aspects of content acquisition and development, and built a catalog of 100+ peer-reviewed, openly licensed college textbooks across various subjects. Prior to that, he published history books at Pearson Education. He writes a blog about current issues and trends in the EdTech industry, which you can find at http://michaelboezi.com, along with a full portfolio and more detail on consulting services for content creators, content owners, and investors. Connect with him on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google+.
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