Twelve steps for making the content relevant, up-to-date, and appropriate to student level. (These are from Online Course Improvement Program from New Mexico State University.)
- Verify content, materials, and resources align to learning objectives.
- Verify content, materials, and resources relate to the course.
- Properly cite resources and materials including copyright.
- Confirm materials and resources are current and up to date.
- Properly note and cite any older material or resource and explain why you are using older material.
- Supply course materials from a variety of resources.
- Provide course materials to students in a variety of forms (texts, .pdf, digital, etc).
- Required materials for the course is clearly stated.
- Provide statement explaining which materials are suggested or optional for the course.
- Apprise students of necessary materials at the beginning of class.
- Differentiate and cite epack, instructor developed material, or publisher material.
- Stated course learning objectives align to content, materials, and resources.
Where do you get your content?
Some of us start with a blank page and others get a course that has been created already — but if you wish to 
change or add content where do you get it?
What is content? Something that conveys meaningful information to humans.
Here is a list of free resources that are available (no special order):
Adobe Education Exchange – lots of lessons – especially for digital media and photography. Even though the lessons are geared to Adobe products you can adapt them to your own needs.- The CK-12 Foundation is a California-based non-profit organization whose stated mission is to reduce the cost of, and increase access to, K-12 education in the United States and worldwide. They have created e-textbooks that you can edit for your own needs.
- LearnNowBC has resources mostly for math, sciences and English.
BC Learning Network has whole moodle courses available to BC schools. These schools must be members of BCLN – check with your admin if your school is a member. Updates are usually done in the summer time and therefore you can update your course in September.
PhET simulations for math and science. PhET provides fun, free, interactive, research-based science and mathematics simulations. The simulations are written in Java, Flash or HTML5, and can be run online or downloaded to your computer.- Youtube videos. I have found over the years that videos are taken down and therefore deadlinks occur in my courses. To combat this issue, I usually download videos to the LMS.
Hippocampus is a free, core academic website that delivers rich multimedia content–videos, animations, and simulations–on general education subjects to middle-school and high-school teachers and college professors, and their students, free of charge. Teachers project HippoCampus content during classroom learning and assign it for computer labs and homework. Students use the site in the evenings for study and exam prep. Users do not need to register or log in to use the site.
Articles about Content:
Create Online Courses That Make It Easy to Learn! by Ann Fandrey, Annette McNamara (April 6, 2015)
They offer five techniques, borrowed from web content strategy, to help ensure efficient workflows, and consistent organization:
- Maintain a content inventory
- Streamline and unify content creation with templates
- Maintain a style guide
- Establish an editorial calendar
- Establish a metrics plan for evaluation
What Explains Success at Success Academy? by Charles Sahm (Summer 2015)
This article discusses the success at an elementary charter school in New York. Even though it is a face-to-face school, I thought they had a few points that could transferred into the online environment.
- blocks curriculum
- everything has a purpose
- no off-the-shelf curriculum that met the needs of all students, so it developed its own
Discussion: Provide at least three different resources that could be used in an online course. They can be free or have a cost.
Can you import the content or do you need to link to it from your Learning Management System?
Are you able to edit the content that you find?
