So how can we use what we know from the science of learning (cognitive psychology) in the development and design of our (online) courses.

Learning goals are the basis of every good course, so they need proper attention.

If you formulate learning goals that are too ambitious, you can discourage students. in that case it's wise to create subgoals that lead up to the more ambitious goals.

Learning goals should be clear, specific and - if possible - measurable. It's important that make explicit to what extent a learning goal has to be mastered.

Learning goals have to be linked to your content, activities and assessment. They form a red line that cuts across your course. The goals come before the content.

baseline assessment
concentrate on big concepts
conceptual growth is much easier than conceptual change (let them solve a problem where their concept leads to a wrong result)

Fish is Fish
Gapminder

Motivation is a key concept to learning. To be motivated a student has to see value in the learning goals and their expectations should be realistic and positive. It also helps if you can connect to their interests and living environment.

Pre-instruction phase.

Don't exclude extrinsic motivation. Often students will do a task because they want to do it and earn a good grade at the same time. Light forms of gamication like badges can also boost extrinsic motivation.

Texts, videos and presentations that are too long, will overburden the working memory (cognitive load theory) and students will lose track of the learning goal. This is one of the reasons to create smaller learning objects (sushi analogy). It's easier to transfer them to the long-term memory, especially if you can con connect them to prior knowledge.

Another reason is that these smaller learning units resonate better with smartphones and tablets.

This doesn't mean that you can't have student working on a longer text. Just make sure that it's printable and teach how to 'chunk' this text themselves.

These learning objects have to be organized in strong structures. If the connections and links are clear, it's a lot easier to process new info. From scientific research we've seen that students don't always see these connections, so often you will have to make them explicit or draw their attention to the connection.

In a lot of courses the connections are linear and that works well, for instance in a chronological event. But if you can increase the number of connections, the learning result will be better.

For motivational reasons and to make sure that new knowledge or skills end up in the long term memory, interaction with the content is crucial.

We already said that these activities and assignments have to be linked to the learning goals. If you vary these activities, motivation increases. Make sure your assignments are challenging enough for your students, but still feasible.

Make sure your instructions are clear and students are aware of workload, due dates and so on.

Social media applications (in the sense of User generated content) are often a great way to extend your toolkit.

A few quick examples.

Of course it's important to let your student know how to reach you, when you will be available and in what time frame they can expect an answer to their questions.

Introduce yourself (maybe with a video) and give your student a chance to get to know each other. Humanize your courses. Make sure you know who your students are.

An important aspect of communication is feedback. Feedback should be very specific en should contain an explanation or steps to improve or to move forward (feedforward). Don't give the answer away. 'Well done' or 'incorrect' are not feedback.

Online you can automate a part of the feedback, but make sure that you use all the possibilities of the environment like audio and video.

Student are more focused on results than on feedback, so you will have to stress the importance of feedback for learning. It's often better to give the student a few specific point which need improvement, than to give him a correction where he has to find out which remarks are most important.

This is a very old rule, but it still applies. Make sure important content comes back with spaced repetition. Again, this increases the chances that important concepts or skills end up in long term memory.

Give your students a chance to use the feedback that you have given them. So let a certain activity or assignment come back and ask the students explicitly how they incorporated your feedback in their new work.

In an online course there should be give plenty of opportunity for formative asessment, although students might find these assessment less important because they don't count towards a final grade. You should counter this view and stress the importance for learning in a safe environment (sandbox principle).

Explain at the beginning of the course how student will be assessed and vary your evaluation methods. Just an exam at the end of course is insufficient.

Assessment is not only important for a formative and summative judgement, it can also help your students to find out what they already know and what they need extra in order to move further.

That's why a teacher should also provide possibilities for peer and self-assessment. The goal of peer-assessment should be understood as a way to gain more insight into the strong and weak points of his own work by assessing somebody else's work with the help of a rubric.

It's quite easy for a course designer to develop a comfortable tour of all the highlights in the course, but it's a lot more difficult to create a course that encourages students to become more adventurous learning travelers.

Universal Design for learning (UDL) has 3 main principles

- Multiple means of representation = multimodal =
Offer content in a few different ways (text, audio, graphic, ...)

- Multiple means of expression:
Let students choose (when appropriate) by which medium they hand in an assignment. So a book review doesn't have to be written, it could also be an audio recording or an interactive poster.

- Multiple means of engagement:
Goes back to motivation. Grown up learners appreciate when they have a say in how they navigate the content (not necessarily linear).

Consistent design starts with visual consistency. Make a style sheet before you start your course where you decide what fonts, colours and icons to use.

If you present text and images together, make sure they are close to each other on the screen. Avoid all extra content that has nothing to do with what you're actually trying to teach. At the start of a section you can use something like a cartoon to activate prior knowledge, but don't try to embellish important content.

Also make sure your navigation is consistent and avoid too many clicks to get to the content.

Universal Design for learning plays an important role in accessibility by offering content by different media.

It's impossible that every teacher will become an accessibility expert, but with a few simple measures you can improve the accessibility of your courses significantly. Transcript of YouTube videos
Alt text for images
...

Feedback again, but know from your students. Don't make it a formality. Tell the you will take their remarks seriously, but also explain why you designed certain things the way you did.

If you have the opportunity to ask former students or colleagues to try out a course before you launch it will be beneficial for the final result.

Learning doesn't have to be fun, it can be hard work. But celebrate when someone gets a good result or shows a lot of grit to solve a complex problem. So yes, celebrate learning.