When designing or teaching an online course, aligning your objectives, assessments, and instructional materials helps create a clear and cohesive learning experience for both you and your students. This structure ensures that every part of the course works together, but it can also limit flexibility for students who want to explore topics more deeply or who need additional support. Supplemental resources offer a practical way to address this. These are optional, nonrequired materials that students can choose to engage with to extend their learning or reinforce key concepts. When used thoughtfully, supplemental resources can increase motivation, support different learning needs, and provide opportunities for both enrichment and remediation.
Selecting supplemental resources
Choosing supplemental resources is just as important as selecting any other course component. While these resources fall outside the traditional course design triangle, you can still apply the same principles to guide your choices.
- What are my students interested in?
- How do my students learn best?
- What are my students’ learning preferences?
- What content covered in other courses in my program can I review?
- What future content can I preview?
Adding supplemental resources
As with other elements of your online course, it’s also important that you add supplemental resources both purposefully and strategically. Students in your course should know that these resources are optional, not required. For example, you can label them as supplemental resources or group them together in their own module.
Providing supplemental support
Supplemental resources aren’t solely limited to encouraging exploratory or additional learning. You can also include supplemental resources in your course to help students who might struggle or need additional support. By doing so, you provide students who might otherwise find the course difficult with additional opportunities to succeed. This can take one of two forms:
Proactive support
These are the resources you select during the instructional design process. It can also refer to materials you add during course enhancement to address areas where students have struggled in past offerings of the course. When providing this type of supplemental resources, you anticipate areas you think students might find tough or problematic.
Reactive support
These are resources you disseminate during course delivery, typically in conjunction with formative assessment results. For example, if students struggle with an assessment and aren’t making progress toward learning objectives, you could send out supplemental resources to help them succeed.
Whether you choose proactive or reactive support, it’s essential that these resources remain optional. Supplemental resources should not replace structured course elements or scaffolding. Their goal is to offer extra help when students need it, not to act as a substitute for core learning materials.
When used thoughtfully, supplemental resources can be a powerful asset. They motivate students, deepen engagement, and offer support for those who need it. By considering your course context and aligning supplemental materials with your course structure, you create opportunities for students to explore topics further and receive the support they need to succeed. With clear labeling and strategic integration, supplemental resources can enhance the learning experience without overwhelming your students.
