online course design

This volume engages current debates on establishing or maintaining quality online education, instructional practices, and educational innovation. The book is divided into four parts: (1) five essays on “overview and implications of practices and processes for assuring quality,” (2) six essays on “quality assurance and continuous improvement at the course design and teaching levels,” (3) six essays on “processes for assuring quality at resource and program levels,” and (4) two essays of “final thoughts.”

Thirty-nine education practitioners wrote either single-authored or multi-authored essays for this collection of nineteen articles. Some of them direct online education, quality control, or program assessment. A few others serve in K-12 online learning programs. A couple of contributors hold communications or marketing appointments. Nearly all hold administrative educational leadership or are academic researchers or professors. Many of the authors work at institutions of higher learning located in Pennsylvania. Others teach at institutions located in Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Pittsburgh, Virginia, West Virginia, Washington DC, and British Columbia.

On the book’s coverage of topics, I expected to find and found, pieces about improving course design, determining effectiveness and faculty development, and reviewing culturally diverse student populations. Significant online education concerns are addressed in stand-alone essays: ethics, academic advising, learning analytics, knowledge management, contact hours in online education, and accreditation. The volume also includes a helpful essay on concerns about online accessibility (including reaching disabled persons), affordability, and accountability. Interesting contributions include “The Sloan Consortium Pillars and Quality Scorecard,” that is used to benchmark effectiveness, efficiencies, and innovation, and “The Power of a Collaborative, Collegial Approach to Improving Online Teaching and Learning.” Of notable mention is the careful attempt throughout to focus on issues related to: government – federal, state, and district levels, accrediting agencies, professional bodies, faculty, managers/administrators, controllers, assessors, and learners.

Teaching Theology & Religion readers may find a number of relevant essays. The volume does not engage theological education or religious studies in the liberal arts. Still, discussions and principles raised are transposable to online religious education. Online religion studies and theology programs continue to become more popular. A 2012 study of online education in the United States shows that 70 percent of higher education institutions surveyed have recognized the critical importance of online education; 6.7 million students enrolled in at least one online course (I. Elaine Allen and Jeff Seaman, Changing Course, Babson Survey Research Group, Pearson Education, and Sloan Consortium, 2013). An August 2014 web search at www.GradSchools.com lists more than 150 accredited online religious programs: 51 doctorates, 138 masters, 22 certificates, and 7 hybrid programs. Religious community online has been empirically investigated (Heidi Campbell, Exploring Religious Community Online, Peter Lang, 2005). In time, religious educators will also study this phenomenon. Until then, religious educational administrators and leaders can contextualize insights from this volume with classical areas of program creation and evaluation in curriculum, instruction, institution, faculty, and student components, to provide innovative online educational program.

The first online course I ever viewed appeared to be a simple transfer of teaching materials from the in-person format to the online environment. There were scans of handwritten lecture notes, a few documentary links, and a couple of ungraded discussion forums. This haphazard planning was a reminder that the virtual classroom is a distinctly different environment from the traditional classroom and must be planned for and constructed in a very different way. This is where Stavredes and Herder’s An Online Guide to Course Design would have been useful, to navigate the opportunities an online course affords and to mitigate the problems of student retention and persistence sometimes seen with distance education.

Stavredes and Herder advocate an outcomes-based design in order to plan an online course fully before it even begins. One starts by first asking what students should learn from the course, then asking how to assess what they have learned, and finally asking how they will learn this content. To this end the authors break course creation down into a four-part arc of (1) Analysis, (2) Design, (3) Development, and (4) Implementation and Evaluation.

In the first step, “Analysis,” the instructor assesses the characteristics of the expected learners and articulates his or her goals for the course. The authors invoke Bloom’s Taxonomy to structure the goals of the course and they use this framework again in choosing course activities.

The second phase, “Design,” takes up the bulk of the book. The authors helpfully recommend strategies for choosing and sequencing course activities. Of particular note is the role of the asynchronous classroom discussion, as discussions are one of the ways an instructor creates a social presence in the virtual classroom. Here we see that the online environment is fundamentally different from the face-to-face classroom. “If learners don’t feel a connection with you and their peers, it is difficult for them to persist online” (80). An instructor must deliberately foster a social presence to engage students in the online classroom. The authors recommend a problem-based approach to content-related discussions: present students with a real-world issue and let them draw inferences from the subject matter to solve the problem.

In the “Development” phase the authors describe further how lecture notes, videos, and introductions can help enhance the sense of the online classroom as a social and collaborative community. The authors also offer advice for developing rubrics and how to write instructions for students accustomed to scanning information on the Internet rather than actively reading it.

Finally, in the “Implementation and Evaluation” phase the authors recommend reflecting on the course to improve it according to specific standards. The authors develop a rubric for evaluating a course and they recommend eliciting feedback from students as well as from colleagues after each term, to discover areas for improvement.

A real strength of this book is that the authors do not just explain what makes for good course design. They give examples of how to design well with a high degree of precision. For example, they offer clear guidelines for articulating course outcomes. In chapter 10 there is a chart quantifying the amount of time different activities in a course take, from assigned reading, to writing, to taking quizzes, in order to meet accreditation expectations. It is this concern with ensuring that all aspects of course design are planned and deliberate that makes this book an asset to anyone serious about developing an effective online course.