I just finished reading Moore's and Kearsley's (2012) chapter on course design and development, which I paired with Caplan's and Graham's (2008) chapter on the Design and Development of Online Courses, in Anderson's Theory and Practice of Online Learning.
Both chapters essentially say the same thing: It takes a village to develop a good online course.
Moore and Kearsley may be well-intended, and they each speak from extensive experience, but they're almost condescending in some places: "Many academics resist the discipline and supervision in working in a systems way. However there is very little doubt that there is a direct relationship between the time and effort put into the Instructional Systems Design and the ultimate quality of the distance education program" (p. 100). College faculty are routinely referred to as recalcitrant children. If administrators and staff want faculty buy-in, they need to be more careful with their language.
It feels as though both of these chapters are aimed at administration buy-in, i.e., do not expect your faculty to put their courses online all by themselves. They can't do it. And they shouldn't be expected to. Caplan and Graham (2008) write, "Many instructors typically underestimate the time and assets required to develop, maintain, and offer an online course" (255). I'd argue that administrators are guilty of this to a much larger extent--especially if they aren't currently teaching or haven't taught for awhile. Every single aspect of the course, from the big-picture items like course objectives to the tiniest items like determining how and when students will interact in a synchronous online session, needs to be figured out in advance. Far in advance. No one can reasonably do this alone.
I have done a lot of this alone, of course, which hasn't necessarily been a crisis. I'm an eager student as much as I am an eager teacher, so it has been natural for me to read up on course design and online learning as well as blended learning best practices. I go over every lesson plan with my TAs, both in advance and after the class is over, to figure out how to improve on what did and did not go well. This is fun for me. It probably isn't fun for everybody.
Based on my experience, the most important point that Moore and Kearsley (2012) make is that the "information communicated in distance-learning materials should be organized into self-contained lessons or units. One of the reasons a person enrolls in a distance-learning program, rather than simply research the subject alone, is that a course of study provides a structure of the content and the learning process" (p. 105). In other words, the student trusts that the instructor will design a well-organized course, one that's clearly marked along the way. One that has a map. A legible one.
Since teaching blended classes, I have become much better at chunking material and organizing it into modules. Last semester, I finally released my ideal of having thematic modules and simply had a new Module every week. I give them subtitles so that students understand what they're about, i.e., Week 2: Critical Reading and Summary. But I've found that having a new Module every week has greatly reduced confusion--we are *here* in the semester. Week 8. Go to the Week 8 module if you're confused. If you're still confused, go to Week 7. And so forth.
In all: two chapters about course design. Good advice. Idealistic, but if more administrators understood how complicated it is to prepare and deliver an online (or blended) course, that would help all of us.
References:
Caplan, D. and Graham, R. (2008). Design and development of online courses. In Anderson. & F. Elloumi (Eds.), Theory and practice of online learning (2nd Ed.). Edmonton, AB: Athabasca Press
Moore, M.G. and Kearsley, G. (2012). Distance education: a systems view of online learning. 3rd ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
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