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*** This might belong in module 1, it does not relate directly to assessment and is more of a general reading?
Key Characteristics of a High-Quality Online Course
In this reading, we will explore the defining characteristics of a high-quality online course.
We begin with broad strokes, noting how our federal education system defines online education, and then offer a quick review of online course delivery options available today. Finally, as we move from general to specific, we discuss the elements that make for courses with high quality.
The Definition of an Online Education
The Higher Education Opportunity Act (2008), referred to as HEOA, offers a specific definition of “Distance Education” as a course that:
- Uses one or more technologies to deliver instruction to students who are separated from the instructor, and
- supports regular and substantive interaction between the students and the instructor, synchronously and asynchronously.
Thus, according to the HEOA definition, fully online courses come under the umbrella of distance education. For help interpreting what is meant by regular and substantive interaction, refer to the analysis by the WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies (WCET), On the OIG/WGU Finding, Part 1: When Interaction Is Not Interaction, and/or discuss with your instructional design consultant.
How does a fully online course differ from other courses that use the Internet to deliver course content? The graphic below shows a continuum of course delivery options based on the use of online features.
Web-Enhanced. The majority of traditional campus-based courses at Boise State fall into this category. In a web-enhanced course, the instructor uses a course management system such as Blackboard to post the syllabus and other course material such as links, excerpts, handouts, or video clips.
Hybrid. The key difference between Web-enhanced and hybrid courses is that the hybrid courses have online elements that replace “seat time” in the traditional classroom. Hybrid (or blended) courses include online interactions and activities.
Fully Online. In this seminar, you’ll be designing and developing a fully online course. In a fully online course, everything that would normally take place in a face-to-face learning environment happens instead via instructional and informational technologies. All student-to-content, student-to-student, and student-to-instructor interactions occur online.
Characteristics of a High-Quality Online Course
While there are many different things that contribute to the design of a high-quality online course, we focus on five major characteristics in this module. These characteristics are listed below.
#1 A high-quality online course builds engagement and interaction.
Moore & Kearsley (1996) make the proposition that an effective online course has three types of interaction throughout:
- Learner-Content Interaction: Students are actively engaged in exploring and making sense of course content. For instan