Issues of online course design

Abstract

The advances and development of information and communication technology, especially Internet and the World Wide Web, enables learner to acquire information and learning opportunities without time and location constraints. Online distance learning complements the classroom teaching, and together, they serve the rising needs of lifelong learning in the 21st century. The problem of this empirical study was to determine the instructional design of ten selected online courses that meet the need of interactive and collaborative online learning based upon an assessment template outlining the three criteria classes: facilitating online learning, content presentation, and application of information and communication technology. The assessment template was developed by the researcher, and proved by the research committee members. The particular purpose of the empirical study was to identify issues in designing online courses by comparing ten selected Internet based classes based on an instrument designed by the researcher and proved by the members of research committee. The second purpose was to portray the types of instructional design methods and technologies applied among these courses. The sample population of this research was ten online courses designed by university instructors from nine universities in the United States of America, and one educational group in Canada. The findings of the study indicated that the online instructional design among the evaluated courses was strongly influenced by the pedagogy of one-to-many classroom teaching. Course designers/instructors need more professional training to improve the quality of user-friendly and visual effects and the usage of information and communication technology. Last, but not the least, there is a need to research on good practices of designing and facilitating online collaborative learning.