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License: Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed) Attribution: Designing Online Learning by Innovative Learning
Incorporating best practices into online courses is often times the focus of an instructional designer working in an academic setting. Following nationally recognized best practices, the instructional designer will find guidance on how to meet or exceed their institution’s quality assurance standards in their online course design.
Learning Objectives
- Apply contemporary approaches to quality assurance and quality standards.
- Tailor quality assurance standards to the organization’s needs.
- Identify quality by design, and apply best practices in an online setting.
- Identify each step in the instructional design process.
- Understand what accessibility means in an online environment, why it is important, and what standards
and policies are in place to support it.
E-learning is characterized by the evolution of educational tools in a transitional period, that is, the use of computers for learning. Organizations produce checklists and guidelines to ensure quality from the early stages of design. By applying predefined quality factors to educational systems engineering, quality can be ensured. This is what we mean by quality assurance by design: ensuring that mechanisms allow human capabilities to further expand.
In general, quality refers to fitness of purpose. In e-learning, quality refers to learning (Stephenson, 2005), something excellent in performance (EFQUEL, 2005). In particular, quality in e-learning means providing the right content at the right time, enabling learners to acquire knowledge and skills and apply their learning to improve their performance, whether as an individual or within an organizational framework (ASTD & NGA, 2001). Stephenson (2005) proposed that quality depends on its interdisciplinary nature, and the identification of quality factors for a given environment depends on the chosen perspective. As there are two essential levels—the pedagogical and the operational—the target for return of investment must therefore be viewed as long term.
National bodies and international organizations have now developed principles, guidelines, and benchmarks to describe quality based on the international developments in the field (QAA, 1998; CHEA, 2001; USNEI, 2001; ISO-9000, the Benjamin Franklin Institute, 2001; EFQUEL, 2006). Furthermore, importance is also attached to national standards resulting from the globalization and universal access of learners as customers and taxpayers.
Quality Assurance
Quality assurance (QA) is a planned and systematic review process of an institution or program to determine that acceptable standards for learner-centered education, scholarship, pedagogic culture and expertise, infrastructure, and organizational strategy and vision, are being maintained and enhanced. This would include expectations that mechanisms of quality control for benchmarking are in place and effective. QA pr