MAET Portfolio

Reflection On The Creation Of An Online Course

The primary reason for creating an online course is to provide access to learning, any time, any place. Online courses provide more than just access. Good online courses offer a quality of instruction that cannot be matched by face-to-face instruction. Online instruction can incorporate a broader range of information, integrating course content with the informational resources of the Web. Students can interact and work together in ways that are not possible with face-to-face education. Space and time barriers to collaborative work on plans, projects, reports, and other learning tasks are removed.
Online courses present a few immediate and often time-consuming challenges.

First, they require a lot of technical support. It is essential to have a Web server and a webmaster, and useful to have help from instructional designers. Second, online courses require a good deal of time using e-mail and electronic conferencing with students. Third, online courses frequently require the instructor to re-think some basic concepts, including how he or she approaches teaching. This is especially true for teachers accustomed to the lecture mode, because online teaching does not readily support lecturing. Even with streaming audio and video, online lectures are invariably less stimulating than face-to-face ones.

Despite these challenges, the benefits of an online course outweigh the time consumed creating it. Two benefits have already been named: increased access and the potential for improved quality of instruction. A third is perhaps the most important. Moving to online teaching forces critical reflection on teaching philosophy and goals, which improves the effectiveness of teaching, online or not. Online teaching also presents new opportunities for learning activities. Group cooperative learning, for example, is easier online, because asynchronous meetings eliminate schedule conflicts. Even synchronous meetings are easier online because space and distance barriers are removed.

When designing an online course, you'll need to consider the following: How to revise existing learning activities to make them suitable for online delivery, or how to create new ones. Online courses benefit from such learning activities as topic dialogue. You also need to consider how to provide information using methods other than lectures. Simply putting lecture notes on a Web site is not enough. Online tutorials and slide shows help, as do textbooks, articles, and links to Web sites.

The most important thing about getting started is to get started early. If you're starting from the ground up, it will take even longer. Most of the time and effort goes to content and learning activities.


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