Developing Engaging Instructional Materials

A Venn diagram describing the importance of quality instructional materials. The top says improving classroom engagement, the right says build teacher-student relationships, and the right says reflect instructor's effort and interest

In any course, there are key subject matter content concepts and skills that students need to learn. After clearly defining your course learning objectives and key assessments (i.e. how they’ll demonstrate what they’ve learned), the next step is to choose the instructional materials and learning activities that will lead students to achieve the learning goals (Wiggins & McTighe, 2012).

 

Quality instructional materials are fundamental to student engagement in your course, as they not only make the student experience more interesting and enjoyable, but also reflect the instructor’s effort and interest—and therefore contribute to building the student-instructor relationship. In choosing content (textbooks, anthologies, articles, videos, podcasts, digital course reserves, etc.) for students to read, watch or listen to, it’s recommended to consider the following criteria:

 

  • Accessibility: Ensure materials are accessible to all learners
  • Alignment: Ensure materials align with course learning objectives
  • Currency: Use materials that are up-to-date in edition, knowledge, etc.
  • Low or No Cost: Use Open Education Resources   
  • Coverage: Ensure that resources adequately cover a particular topic
  • Diversity and Inclusion: Present unbiased representations of gender, race, ethnicities, etc. and varied perspectives
  • Universal Design for Learning: Present content in multiple ways in order to appeal to students’ learning preferences
  • Readability: Review all content for clarity in definitions, examples, graphics, etc.

Best practices in Developing Engaging Instructional Materials

Examples of engaging formats include, but are not limited to:

  • Recorded mini-lectures
  • Infographics
  • Simulation-based learning
  • Case studies
  • Community service learning
  • Civic engagement opportunities

Students love to “see” you.  So, whenever possible, it’s a great idea to create your own materials from scratch or remix materials from content found in OER repositories.

Regardless of the media and technology you use, the following best practice principles will guide you in developing engaging instructional materials for your online course.

 

Click each item to learn more.

Resources & Tools 

There are several ways you can integrate engaging learning materials into your course. See the chart below for ideas and resources for accessing them. 

Content Type

Description

Tools/ Resources

Digital Course Reserve 

Digital Course Reserves are digital course materials which the UMass Amherst Library has reserved for use in a specific class.

  • Scans of book chapters and journal articles
  • Links to databases and e-books

These also include audiovisual materials, such as streaming film and music.

  • The material is freely available and accessible for students 24/7 from anywhere
  • For more information on UMass Library Course Reserves, visit UMass Library Course Reserves 
Recorded Mini-Lectures

Recorded Mini-Lectures Lecturing is another common method for delivering course content in person or online, during synchronous or asynchronous sessions.

  • For live, synchronous lectures, Zoom is the most commonly used platform.
  • For asynchronous lectures, you can use Echo360, Canvas Studio or VoiceThread.
  • EchoVideo
  • VoiceThread
  • Zoom
  • Canvas Studio

 

Open Educational Resources (OER)

Open Educational Resources are educational materials and tools offered freely for anyone to use and—under some licenses—to re-mix, improve and redistribute. They include: 

  • Learning content: full courses and modules, textbooks, lectures/ tutorials, collections, and journals.
  • Tools: software to support the creation, delivery and improvement of open learning content.
  • Implementation resources: Intellectual property licenses to promote open publishing of materials, design-principles, and localization of content.

References & Resources

Developing Engaging Instructional Materials © 2024 by University of Massachusetts Amherst is licensed under CC BY 4.0

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