Offering a legend of commonly used terms, acronyms, and/or symbols provides a nice, time saving reference for students and makes delivering content more efficient. In addition, this type of reference document can serve as a study aid and/or support more effective note taking.
Implementation
There are a few ways to create a legend for language, symbols, acronyms, etc. suitable for your course:
- Create a simple document or page in the online course that lists the common language/symbol/acronyms for the course, post it, and advise students that it exists and where.
- Develop a collaborative document within the course online site using discussions, pages, or collaboration functions and then invite learners to contribute to the legend as they come across language/symbol/acronyms that would benefit from clarification throughout the course.
- Recommend students create and update their own dictionary of language/symbol/acronyms to refer to as they work through course content throughout the semester.