Using the KonMari method to “fold” your course content – Selecting content that sparks joy!

Our instructional design team works closely with faculty members as they develop new courses for online delivery. These same instructors become inspired by the design and feel of their new courses and come back to us for help in redesigning other courses. We also find that new faculty elicit our help as they try to understand the Learning Management System course shells and content that they inherit from colleagues. Many of these course shells have been copied from year to year and have become a bit unwieldy.

The increasing number of requests from our faculty members to sort out courses which have become “a little messy” over time has inspired us to identify best practices for redesigning and re-organizing course content to help faculty members tidy up their courses. We adapted a version of “The KonMari Method” of tidying up a house and created an online professional development workshop for our faculty. Our objective is to provide them with the tools and skills they need to re-organize their online courses. We will guide participants through the content and concepts of our online workshop in this hands-on session. We plan to utilize the categories in our online workshop and give participants an opportunity to redesign one category, or sort one learning module, in one of their own online courses.

“The KonMari Method” encourages tidying by category – not by location – beginning with clothes, then moving on to books, papers, komono (miscellaneous items), and, finally, sentimental items. When instructors re-organize course content, they can apply these simple tidying concepts to make their courses intuitive and more navigable. More importantly, before tidying up the houses, Marie Kondo always meditates with homeowners to “greet” the house. This ritual can be applied to course tidying too, as course developers need clear directions about the ultimate course layout that they need before tidying course content.

0. Greeting the House - Course Objectives

Starting with course objectives is a great way to tidy a course. Clear course objectives serve as the road map of a course, as they can help course developers envision the ultimate course structure they wish to achieve. If the current course objectives are not specific or measurable, we suggest instructors to use the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy as a guideline to write specific learning objectives that can help them achieve each course objective. We also incorporate the SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely) strategies into the writing of measurable learning objectives.

1. Clothes - Multimedia Resources

This category refers to the instructional resources such as animations, images, simulations, videos, and web links. This category is one of the earlier stages in course tidying since multimedia resources are easy to identify and evaluate. A lot of courses look very cluttered due to the random placement of these multimedia resources. Although multimedia resources can promote student engagement and learning effectiveness, too many scattered multimedia resources may result in cognitive overload.

We suggest online instructors to take a closer look at each multimedia resource and think twice about its usefulness in terms of the alignment with course objectives. If the connection is not clear, and the resource is not directly related to the course objectives, please discard it. The value in reviewing these resources is that it helps instructors develop a better understanding of course alignment. By recognizing, and then discarding, the ones that aren’t reinforcing course objectives, online courses will be better organized and aligned.    

2. Books - Assigned Readings

This category includes instructional resources such as textbooks, journal articles, newspapers, or government documents. In an online course, reading materials that are not closely connected to the learning objectives might confuse, or even intimidate, students. Therefore, we strongly recommend that instructors periodically review their course reading materials, and make sure they are up to date.

In the case where an older version of a textbook is used, then the instructor should note the difference between old and current version. Although journal articles usually do not have any “newer versions”, there may be other new challenges or research related to the field. We recommend instructors to include new articles and delete some old ones so that students can keep up with the latest trend in the field. We also recommend that instructors categorize course readings based on topics or theories. If a course has optional or supplemental readings, they should be separated from the required readings.

3. Papers - Assessment Tasks

Identifying assessment tasks can help instructors clean the course structure and make course alignment straight forward. Some instructors have asked us how many assessment tasks should be assigned in a course.  This category is hard to quantify as it depends on how well those assessments align with learning outcomes and course objectives. If the current formative and summative assessment tasks do not align with course objectives, then 20 assignments might not be enough. Similarly, if an instructor has 5 projects and they are perfectly aligned with the course objectives, then the instructor probably does not need to curate more assessment tasks.

In order to tidy up this category, we suggest instructors to refer to course objectives and create a course alignment map to decide how they want to redesign this category. Another important aspect for redesigning this category is to keep in mind students’ time-on-task, as well as the instructor’s grading workload. Instructors need to balance the grading time that they spend on the weekly subjective and objective assessments. The time that online students need to spend on a course each week should be as the same as on-campus students.

4. Komono - Content Folders

This category is relatively hard to “fold” as many instructors tend to “load up” on content. If this content isn’t well organized (carefully “folded”), we might wind up sending students down unintended different rabbit holes. For example, if instructors are using weekly content folders or learning modules to host learning activities and assignment tasks, the associated content should be available in the same place. Not only that, but the link to each activity and resource should be visible. No one likes to be surprised. Students look at the items in a module to gauge the amount of work they need to do. If an instructor created a link in the module that leads even more folders that reveal longer lists of readings and videos that students need to review, students will, at very least, be frustrated.

Some learning management systems (LMSs), such as D2L and Canvas, already list the numbers of items that need to be viewed in a content folder. But other LMSs, such as Blackboard and Moodle, do not have this visual cue for students. For the instructors who are using the latter LMSs, there are a couple of ways to help students plan the time that they need to spend on a learning module: a). List all readings in a single item at the same level of the other learning objects. b). Name the content folder with “folder” or “packet” in its title, as well as provide a bullet list of the items that are inside this folder as the table of content.   

5. Sentimental Items - Instruction

This is the last category listed since this category contains the items instructors believe makes their course unique or special. Items in this category are designed to provide the “personal touch” for an online instructor and give students insight into the instructor’s teaching style. This is the hardest category, as instructors need to give a lot of thoughts to how they want to connect with students and how they want students to experience their courses. It is also hard because instruction should be everywhere. Only once an instructor has sorted every other category, can they really “see” the big picture of the course structure. And from there, they can review the instructions that are associated with every single item to decide whether they need to bridge or polish them.

The bottom line is to be clear. However, since this category is so personal, each online instructor needs to make their own judgements on how they want to guide their students. If an instructor is feeling ambivalent about an assignment, a learning objective, or workflow, students will sense that. If an instructor infuses “frustration or uncertainty” into the tone of the course, students might also feel frustrated or uncertain. This will tend to amplify minor problems. In order to “fold” this category, we suggest instructor to make their tone neutral and/or lively. Moreover, utilizing alternative formats to represent instruction is always a good idea to engage students with different learning preferences.

In this hands-on workshop, we will showcase different scenarios for each of the 5 categories to give participants a better understanding of the results they can expect after “folding” content correctly. We will also brainstorm with participants about the solutions for tidying up difficult scenarios. We hope this “folding” experience will spark joy in participants and inspire them to begin their own “tidying” journey.