I uploaded the syllabus for a course I planned, but never taught, to NotebookLM which generated this post
Introduction: The Challenge of the “Empty Classroom”
If you’re an educator, you’re likely familiar with this scenario: you’re handed an empty digital “course shell” in your learning management system and told to “spin it up,” often on a tight deadline. You have a class to teach, but first, you have to build the classroom.
The pressure to get a course functional can lead us to focus on just getting the content uploaded. But the most impactful improvements often have nothing to do with complex technology. The secret to a high-quality online course lies in a foundational framework for learner-centric design, built on a single, powerful principle: Ease of Use. When students can navigate your course, open its files, and understand its structure quickly and without cognitive effort, they can dedicate their full attention to learning.
This post shares four practical takeaways, grounded in learning science, that form a coherent strategy for reducing learning friction. These strategies are efficient to implement but will transform your course from a simple content repository into an effective, easy-to-use learning environment.
Takeaway 1: Your Course Design Is Draining Your Students’ Brains
The human brain is not a limitless supercomputer. Our ability to perceive, understand, and analyze information—our cognition—is a finite resource. At any given moment, we only have so much mental energy to spend, making it a “zero-sum quantity.” This is the core concept of Cognitive Load Theory, and it provides scientific justification for prioritizing ease of use in your course design.
Learning science identifies three types of cognitive load that compete for a student’s mental bandwidth:
- Intrinsic: The effort needed for the learner to understand the task and how to approach it. This can be managed by breaking a complex task into smaller, clearer steps.
- Germane: The productive effort used for deep learning. This is the “good” cognitive load, where students build new understanding and make connections.
- Extraneous: The mental energy wasted navigating a confusing design, deciphering unclear instructions, or trying to figure out where to find a file. This is unproductive, wasted effort.
The key insight here is that you cannot eliminate the intrinsic load of your subject, but you can dramatically reduce the extraneous load. The primary goal of good course design is to minimize the effort students waste on navigating the course itself. By doing so, you free up their precious mental energy to be spent on germane load—the actual learning.
“By reducing the extraneous cognitive load of using your online course… you leave more capacity for students to think and make sense of your material.”
Think of it this way: a student who is struggling to find the correct reading for the week is a student who isn’t using that brainpower to understand the reading’s content. A clear, intuitive design isn’t just a convenience; it’s a prerequisite for effective learning.
Takeaway 2: Stop Treating Your Course Like a Social Feed (Design for Mission, Not Browsing)
A common counterargument to simplifying course navigation is, “Students scroll for hours on their phones, so what’s the big deal?” This comparison misses a critical distinction in user intent.
When someone is scrolling through social media, they are exploring without a specific destination. In an online course, the opposite is true. Students are not browsing for entertainment; they are on a mission to find specific information quickly—a syllabus, a reading, assignment links. Endless scrolling on a course page creates confusion and frustration because digital spaces lack the “spatial cues” of a physical environment. As you add more content, it becomes increasingly difficult for students to locate what they need.
Here are two simple solutions to create better navigation and reduce the scroll:
- Use Collapsed Content: Most learning management systems allow you to organize material into modules or topics that can be expanded and collapsed. By keeping only the current week or topic expanded by default, you place the most relevant material at the top of the page without overwhelming students with a long, intimidating list of links and files.
- Create a Consistent Structure: All courses are “chunked” into segments like weeks or topics. Organize the content within each chunk in the exact same way. For example, every module could be ordered as: learning objectives, then information resources (readings, videos), then interactive activities (discussions), and finally assessment activities (assignments). This consistency creates a predictable pattern, so students always know where to look.
Takeaway 3: The 10-Minute Fix with the Biggest Impact? Your Naming Conventions.
One of the most powerful yet simple steps you can take to improve your course’s ease of use is to be intentional with your naming conventions. Consistent, meaningful, and descriptive names for files, assignments, and modules reduce confusion, save time, and can even reinforce learning.
Here are four actionable examples:
- Enumerate Announcements: Instead of just a title, number your announcements (e.g., “Announcement #10: Due Date Change for Project 2”). This simple habit allows for precise communication. You can refer students back to a specific message (“See Announcement #10”), and they can be sure they haven’t missed any updates.
- Use Descriptive Module Titles: “Week #3” is functional, but “3: Graphing Linear Equations” is far more useful. When students are looking back for study materials, a descriptive title helps them review course concepts at a glance and find the right information faster.
- Use Full Citations for Readings: Instead of a generic file name like “Chapter #1,” use a full, descriptive title or even a bibliographic citation like “Ackerman, G. (2020). Leadership and the adoption of innovative planning.” This not only provides clarity but also reinforces academic standards.
- Use Action-Oriented Labels: Frame your labels from the student’s perspective to make them more intuitive. For example, replace “objectives” with “What we will study” or “assignments” with “Make sure to do these.” These small linguistic shifts create a more supportive and less stressful learning environment.
Takeaway 4: Accessibility Isn’t an Add-On; It’s the Foundation
While accessibility is often discussed in the context of legal obligations, its principles are really about creating a better, more usable course for everyone. The goal is to ensure your online classroom is:
- Perceivable: Information is presented in ways users can see and hear (e.g., captions, alternative text for images).
- Operable: The course navigation and materials function properly on any device.
- Understandable: It is immediately clear what students need to do and where they need to go.
Ultimately, an inaccessible course is one that is defined by high extraneous cognitive load, forcing students to waste mental energy overcoming design flaws rather than engaging with the content. A key part of making your course perceivable and operable is using universal file formats. This not only ensures every student can open your materials but also enhances security by reducing the need for students to download potentially risky files.
- For read-only documents, use PDFs. They maintain formatting and can be opened in any web browser without being downloaded.
- For materials students need to edit, provide a cloud-based document (like a Google Doc they can copy) or an RTF (Rich Text Format) file, which can be opened by any modern word processor.
- When sharing videos, upload them to YouTube (as “unlisted” for privacy) and embed the link. This creates a clean, distraction-free viewing experience within your LMS, stripping away the advertisements, comments, and recommended videos that can pull students away from the lesson.
Conclusion: Designing for Clarity
In the rush to spin up an online course, it’s easy to believe effectiveness comes from advanced technology. However, the most effective courses are the most intentionally and clearly designed. They are built on the principle of Ease of Use.
By implementing this framework—reducing extraneous cognitive load, streamlining navigation, using clear language, and building for accessibility from the start—you create a learning environment that works better for all students. You remove unnecessary friction and clear the path for them to dedicate their finite brainpower to what truly matters: learning.