From Micro-course Concept to Launch: A Six-Week Path to Quick Implementation (Part 2)

Your go-to guide for creating a micro-course from scratch

Posted on December 16, 2024 in Blog Posts

Part Two: Weeks 4–6

This blog post is a continuation of the first part of From Micro-course Concept to Launch: A Six-Week Path to Quick Implementation, which presents a condensed, six-week plan based on the timeline my colleagues Emily Sartorius Murphy, Patricia Hernandez, and I developed to co-create a series of five micro-courses within a very tight, six-week timeframe, in partnership with first-year seminar faculty (Flores et al., 2023; Flores et al., 2024). If you have just joined the conversation and would like to get more background information on Microlearning and Micro-courses in Library Spaces, follow the link back to the first blog post in the series.

Weeks 4 through 6 focus on tasks relating to micro-course content production, micro-course platform development and staging, and final preparations for launch. In contrast to the planning-intensive tasks introduced in the first three weeks, the Week 4–6 tasks presented here are much more active and production-oriented as the six-week plan comes to a conclusion.  

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Week 4: Course Materials Production

Week 4’s main tasks center on instructional video creation and editing. Ideally, test your camera and microphone to troubleshoot potential issues first, and remember to pause occasionally to save your work if you don’t have autosave enabled!

Begin Filming

Using the script and storyboard you developed previously as a guide, begin to film segments of the instructional video. Any mistakes can be resolved through re-recording and/or creative editing. Breaking up filming time into smaller segments reduces fatigue and helps keep energy levels high and your voice (and attitude) bright.

Prepare Production Materials 

Review content and assets (title cards, intros, outros, etc.) gathered during Week 3 for accuracy and consistency. Be prepared to create or find additional assets if needed, should the inspiration or need arise.

Begin Editing

The goal is to create the instructional video’s first draft. Pay attention to details like proper audio alignment with video, adjust audio levels to balance out narration and music, and use audio and video transitions strategically. Generate captions from the script to add to your video(s) to ensure accessibility. If you upload your video(s) to YouTube, be sure to review and clean up YouTube’s auto-generated captions.

Week 5: Micro-course Platform Development and Staging

Consider where you will host your micro-course(s) carefully. Choose an accessible, familiar, easy-to-use online platform for your learners to access your micro-course(s). Recent research indicates that learners’ perceived ease of use is the strongest factor influencing their motivation and for microlearning acceptance (Isibika et al., 2023). For this reason, try to steer away from hard-to-use platforms to avoid learner disengagement and lack of motivation.

Choose a Platform

There are several platforms that can be used to host micro-course content, depending on your students’ and stakeholders’ needs, and your institution’s resources. My colleagues and I used the three choices listed below during our various micro-course series iterations.

Learning Management Systems (LMS) like Blackboard or Canvas are one possible choice. Using your institution’s LMS offers advantages because students tend to be familiar with them and you can integrate your micro-course(s) into instructor course sites. Possible drawbacks associated with using your school’s LMS include extra planning to get sandbox access to the LMS, establishing workflows or workarounds to gain access to students’ assessments in instructors’ course sites, knowledge of how to use the LMS from the instructor side, LMS course settings, and sometimes associated programming languages to effectively integrate your micro-course(s).

Articulate 360 is an easy-to-use course authoring platform, but it requires an annual subscription and this cost may represent a significant drawback. Articulate 360 creates attractive, engaging, interactive content that can be integrated into a LMS’s platform using SCORM files. If not using an LMS, Articulate 360 content can be hosted on a web server or even hosted on a LibGuide.

Google Sites can function as a “container” for micro-course(s) and associated instructional content, along with embedded instructional videos hosted on YouTube. This combination is a free and easily assembled alternative for hosting micro-course content. The main disadvantages to this alternative are Google Sites’s limited design choices for customization and branding and the possible inconvenience associated with students needing to click an external link outside of their LMS course site to access micro-course(s).

Create Activities or Assessments

Revisit the assessments and activities created during Week 2 and build them inside your chosen micro-course platform. Depending on the platform you will be using, you may need to plan how you will collect assessment information from course instructors.

Populate with Instructional Elements

Typically, micro-courses should be completed in 10 minutes or less, something to keep in mind when adding the instructional elements planned in Week 2 into your micro-course platform (Hunter, 2020; Mery, 2022). Don’t forget to apply Universal Design Learning principles when adding instructional elements, and be prepared to create additional content or modifications to ensure accessibility for your learners.

Week 6: Preparing for Launch

Expect to tie up loose ends in Week 6 with final video edits, a final stakeholders meeting, preparation for the next micro-course update cycle, and planning mechanisms to gather faculty and student feedback.

Stakeholder Sharing

Schedule a final meeting or email stakeholders to share a preview and request any last-minute feedback to incorporate into your final edits.

Final Edits 

Apply final edits to your videos and instructional content based on feedback gathered from volunteer student testers and stakeholders. Carefully review and proofread micro-course content to correct spelling errors, broken links, and ensure that interactive features function correctly. Check that accessibility features like alt tags for images are complete.

Prepare to Gather Feedback

Plan and create methods to gather feedback about your micro-course(s) from both faculty and students. This can be a simple survey, a scheduled focus group, or even feedback captured during a faculty meeting. Plan your questions to help prompt faculty to share details about how the micro-course was used in the classroom, and to describe faculty and students’ experiences using them.

Next Iteration Planning

Use feedback gathered from faculty and students along with assessment data to revise and refine updated micro-course versions. Create a plan for implementing rapid updates should the need arise. Maintain regular contact with stakeholders to communicate changes, receive suggestions for improvements, and stay informed of programmatic changes.

Now that the six-week plan has come to an end, it’s time to launch your project!

References

Flores, L., Hernandez, P., Sartorius Murphy, E. (2024, May 4). Out on a limb: Integrating library information literacy micro-courses in first-year courses. [Conference Presentation]. LOEX 2024 Conference, Naperville, IL. United States. https://loexconference.org/files/loex-2024—out-on-a-limb-integrating-library-information-literacy-micro-courses-in-first-year-courses.pdf

Flores, L. Sartorius, Murphy, E., & Hernandez, P. (2023, July 27). Delivering small victories fast with Information Literacy micro-courses. [Conference Presentation]. LILi: Lifelong Information Literacy 2023 Conference. https://lili.libguides.com/lili2023/home.

Hunter, R. (2020). Can you teach research in 10 minutes? Embedding information literacy micro-sessions in module programmes. Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, (19).

Isibika, I. S., Zhu, C., De Smet, E., & Musabila, A. K. (2023). The influence of user-perceived benefits on the acceptance of microlearning for librarians’ training. Research in Learning Technology, 31.

Mery, Y. (2022). A case for microlearning. Library Technology Reports, 58(5), 10-13.

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