What should a good online course do?

P.U.G.

Practical User’s Guide to E-Learning

Susan Smith Nash, Ph.D.

Key Point #1: The quality of the interaction between learner and mentor/interface/collaborative groups determines the quality of an online course.

It is tempting to try to measure the effectiveness of an online course by instituting certain tests that will result in measurable outcomes (performance on tests, time on task, number of words written in essays, number of postings on an online discussion board). However, these are often artificial outcomes and they give false results. Standardized tests do not account for cultural diversity and difference. To make matters worse, to base course performance on mechanical skills and rote memorization means that not all students will be able to perform well, due to difference in learning and cognitive styles.

Key Point #2: An online university course is not simply a correspondence course “tailored” for online delivery, nor is it an onsite, traditional course “adapted” to online delivery.

Online courses are a completely new instructional method, and they require a new approach that focuses on:

a) Proactive learning on the part of the student, who makes a commitment to allow herself to be “guided”;

b) Instructor assumes the role of mentor and guide;

c) The technology itself becomes an additional guide and actor in the cognitive development of the learner;

d) The use of multimedia and interaction to accommodate individual learning styles

i) physical actions which encode meaning with action, particularly intense for kinaesthetic learners;

ii) visual imprints are encoded with meaning based on juxtapositions and labels found on the page or via links;

iii) cognitive / kinaesthetic couplings are strongly reinforced via the sensory-stimulating “rewards” of click-response actions;

iv) personalized attention from the instructor functions as a “reward” for certain behaviors (sending e-mail, completing tasks, etc.);

v) although there is virtual interaction via discussion boards and via e-mail and instant messaging with the instructor, the learner is still working alone, and the identity that he/she creates becomes “real” as others respond to it.

Key Point #3: Effective online courses are ones that can make a large number of relevant connections between a learner’s past experience, current life perspectives, and future goals and aspirations. The course must be developed so that the guide can help facilitate the forging of relevant connections between the course content and the person’s life.

To return to more mundane topics, we can return to the original question: What should a good online course do? Here is a list:

· Provide a clear presentation of the subject matter, with sufficient materials to constitute appropriate content;

· Create a supportive environment for the instructor to be both mentor and guide;

· Present material that allows an understanding of the underlying principles and conceptual framework for the course material;

· Allow the student to develop an ability to apply concepts and theory to problems and tasks relating to the subject;

· Guide students in appropriate and useful ways to organize and classify the knowledge presented in the course;

· Guide learners in strategies for synthesizing knowledge for applications in collaborative endeavors;

· Guide learners as they develop their own ideas about the course material, and create a supportive environment for learners to explain ideas and approaches to their mentor/instructor, who guides them to further development;

· Develop critical thinking skills, facilitated by mentor/instructor;

· Develop effective and creative problem-solving skills, facilitated by mentor/instructor;

· Guide learner in appropriate methods for conducting research and evaluating the validity and/or intrinsic merit of found resources, particularly as applied to the course material and objectives;

· Make connections between course material and material found in independent research associated with the course;

· Make connections between course content, learning objectives, and one’s own life experiences (scaffolding);

· Make connections to establish relevancy of course content and learning objectives with one’s own past, present, or future career, academic and professional goals;

· Engage learner on number of levels – intellectual, emotional, analytical – to encourage intellectual risk-taking in a supportive environment;

· Encourage understanding of subject matter through a number of learning styles, with activities that involve active learning and interaction with images, text, discussions, collaborative learning, independent research, synthesizing activities (final projects, etc.).

Key Point #4: The purpose is not simply to transmit knowledge of the subject matter of the course, but to help the learner negotiate a world of information overload, where it is just as important to be able to identify and discredit false information or half-truths as it is to be able to memorize and master the core course content.

In a university environment, where the development of creative problem-solving and critical thinking skills is critical, it is important to keep in mind that times are changing quickly.

In the past, refereed journals were the primary source of information, and the data, hypotheses, suggestions, and conclusions contained there were considered to have been subjected to close scrutiny by experts in the field.

At this point in time, learners as well as instructors are likely to go to the Internet, where legitimate information is yielded up by search engines as readily as opinion, rant, ideology, and infomercials. Sometimes the most convincing sites are not the most legitimate, and it is important to develop strategies for analyzing and assessing the validity of information found there.

Further, the learners and mentors in a course are likely to post their own information on the Internet. Additionally, they are likely to participate in discussion groups and chat rooms, as well as post to websites under their “screen name” which is deliberately anonymous in order to protect one’s privacy and to elicit responses that are not mediated by social pressures.

The environment of idea exchange has been fundamentally altered, and the need to be able to discern between good information and bad is increasingly urgent.