Thanks to the excellent course design of the ATS course, I have improved so much on the understanding of online learning in just two weeks. This week, we are focusing on building course activities.

Course activities are essential to online courses as they are the only ways to keep track of students’ progress, keep students engaged, and develop a healthy community online. Various techniques are mentioned in the book and other reading materials. But I want to talk about the general ideology when designing these activities.

The first is to be meaningful. No matter what course activities are implemented in the course, the final goal is to help students gain knowledge and achieve their goals.

The second is to be personal. The addition of personality in the course activity design can really give a unique feature to the course and make it stand out.

Another is to be creative. Using some novel techniques like mastery quizzes, goals contracts can attract students’ attention and keep students engaged throughout the course.

If faculties can bear these ideas in mind when designing any summative and formative activities, they will definitely be well-accepted by students and achieve their goals to educate students.