How to Create an Online Lesson for Easy Navigation

To learn more about creating online lessons, check out my Anatomy of an Online Lesson blog post here. 

How many clicks did it take to get you to this page? Was it easy to get here or confusing and difficult? 

That is the kind of thing you need to think about as you design an online lesson or course

Here is an example of a lesson from my first year of teaching: 

You click on the first part, the non-fiction reading assignment and you get this: 

What kinds of things do you notice about the directions? Did you find the PDF? Do you have any idea what this assignment is about? Do you do work on a Mac and know what to do with a word document? Do you know how to turn it in?

Plus, the PDF of the article looked like this: 

(this doesn't really have anything to do with the navigation part but, in terms of ease of use, this is not a good example)

Let's take a look at one from this school year: 

Let's do the same thing as before: What kinds of things do you notice about the directions? Are you able to find the resource needed for the assignment? Do you have any idea what this assignment is about? Do you know how to turn it in?

I am by no means saying this is perfect or how things have to be done but see how the resource is linked directly in the assignment's directions? What the students need to do is incredibly clear and repeated. You can also easily tell how to turn in the assignment. 

When we talk about navigation, we want to focus on making things as easy as possible for students. Remember, we are assessing their abilities with our content, not how well they can navigate the LMS. 

If you want to learn more about creating online lessons that are easy for students to follow and fun for them to complete. Check out the Online Lesson Design Email Challenge and by the end of the week, you will have a lesson ready to go!