How to Design Online Courses Using PoRTAL an Online Repository of Open Educational Resources

Online course enrollment was growing steadily (Seaman et al., 2018), that increased exponentially during the COVID-19 pandemic mandating a need for ready-to-teach-online instructors. Very few instructors/educators can say that they have not been challenged by the need to teach or mentor online. Despite experience in face-to-face teaching, faculty were required to develop a new skill set for online teaching and they often do not receive professional development support (Adnan et al., 2017; Frass & Rucker, 2017). This demonstrates a critical need to offer easy-access, on-the-job, and self-paced support to instructors to enable them to adapt to teaching online. With that intention, PoRTAL (Purdue Repository for online Teaching and Learning) was created as an open educational resource (OER) digital repository that is available 24/7 to provide strategies, tips, and resources for instructors struggling to teach online. OERs feature copyright licenses that provide permission for everyone to participate in the 5R activities - retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute” (Wiley, n.d.; Wiley & Hilton, 2019).

Are you thinking about moving your courses to an online format? Are you already teaching online and looking for additional ways to engage your students? PoRTAL is a go-to resource for anyone interested in online teaching and learning. It can help you improve your knowledge and skills as you seek to develop your online courses. Topics include: instructor strategies, course enhancement, pedagogy, active learning, sample tools, and policies to help make your job easier as an online instructor and your courses more engaging for your students. PoRTAL serves the needs of higher education faculty/instructors, K-12 teachers, informal educators/trainers, and instructional designers (Richardson et al., 2023).

Learn more about PoRTAL 1 & 2 in this round table session.