Vol. 2 Number 2, Developing a Successful Online Course: Strategic Planning, Summer 1998

The Spring 1998 DLRN-J outlined some criteria to consider before selecting an online course. While these criteria were developed for the student, they may also be used to assist the educational institution that is developing, or is considering developing an online course. This DLRN-J seeks to highlight some of the crucial first steps an educational institution should consider prior to embarking on online course development.

While most educational institutions will approach implementation of an online course in much the same manner as they would for any new media implementation - with careful committee research and planning - online course implementation requires the additional consideration of the following factors:

Know The Target Audience Or Market

Before beginning any distance education program an educational institution should know the target audience and consider its collective needs. Most people take online courses to complete a high school diploma or a college entrance requirement, to begin a homeschool program, or to increase their skills and knowledge while continuing with their current work and life schedules. Knowing the target audience's motives will help determine if the students need courses that offer academic credit, or courses with a very flexible begin and end schedule, and so forth.

Determine The Technology Set-Up

The online course will be more successful if the educational institution considers factors such as student technology experience, delivery locations, selected hardware and software, Internet access, server capabilities and technical assistance. This is an area that is often overlooked by those developing exceptional content for online courses. However, if the student (or for that matter, the teacher) experiences repeated technical difficulties, the level of frustration will mount such that it won't matter how exceptional the content is and the student will disengage.

With any distance education delivery method, it is advisable to know the capabilities of the media chosen. With online delivered distance education it is imperative to know the server capabilities and make appropriate adjustments. Make sure to check the vendor documentation for all equipment for recommended capacity for both memory and hard drive. Take the recommended amount of memory and hard drive and multiply by 2. Aiming for this recommended number should provide sufficient capacity. As for equipment purchase, try to get the fastest, reasonably priced equipment that is available. There is no reason to spend a fortune. Select the hardware and software carefully. It should be flexible, easy to use and shouldn't overload the server.

Types of servers, hardware, and software educational institutions typically use.? Make sure that there is sufficient Internet connectivity to the server - a fractional T1, a full T1, ISDN, etc. Nothing discourages users more that waiting for a web page (or any app) to appear on their screen. Also ensure that the Internet provider for that server has an established reputation for providing dependable Internet service.

The server should allow for the varying of technologies as this is more likely to increase student interaction and maintain student interest. When considering various technologies, focus on the process and not the technology by asking two simple questions: What do I want to do? and How do I do it? In the event of a server failure, an educational institution should plan for technical flexibility or alternatives. What about using voicemail or fax? An online course can be most effective as one component of a delivery system. Of course, another option is to partner with or contract with an existing service provider thereby placing the technical support and maintenance responsibilities with an experienced entity. An example of such a set-up is the partnership between the University of California and America Online which provides access to online university courses.

Once the educational institution has established its technology set-up, it can cope with varying student technology experiences, skills and access. One strategy to facilitate student Internet access is to set-up technical standards or requirements for course participation (these should be basic) as well as easily accessible technical assistance in print and human form. Both the standards and technical assistance can be posted on the web site and distributed in print form for easy access. Also provide information on Internet access and Internet Service Providers (ISPs). A directory of ISPs can be found on the World Wide Web at http://boardwatch.internet.com/isp and others can be found using a search engine such as Excite and the key words "internet service providers".

An example of basic technical standards for a course is: Each student must have access to a personal computer (an IBM clone must have a 386 processor and Windows 3.1 or higher) equipped with a modem of at least 9600 baud, four megabytes of RAM, and 20 megabytes of free hard disk space. [Heath, Eugene F., Two Cheers and a Pint of Worry: A On-Line Course in Political and Social Philosophy, JALN Volume 2, Issue 1 (March 98)].

Support Staffing And Technical Assistance

Support Staffing

There isn't a good general technical support staffing formula to apply as support depends on the overall level of computer expertise of the users the apps that will be running. For example, if an organization is providing full-blown web and email services to the users versus just access to an application, the technical support profiles are very different. A successful technical support staff has enough warm bodies to respond promptly (an absolute max 4-hour turnaround) to the inquiries received. Given sufficient funding, plan for a couple of technical staffers, and adjust as necessary to meet the turnaround time. Also, remember to factor in the audience needs - do they frequently access the site between 2AM and 6AM? The institution may need to consider hiring enough technical staff to support 24 hour server access and care.

Technical Assistance A self help Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) web page is absolutely necessary and will help leverage the technical support staff's time. This FAQ should include the basic procedures for logging-on, opening up applications, etc, and should contain answers for the more frequently encountered problems with the selected system and software.

The educational institution should also provide an email address, web page form, and phone number that can be used to reach the technical support staff. Then, make it a priority that all requests are promptly addressed.

Instructor Involvement

A very important element in the implementation of an online course is instructor involvement. The instructors should be involved in deciding the technical arrangement that will best support student learning. Both instructors and administrators will be better able to make this decision after they have viewed different technical arrangements so they can see the consequences of each. Their choice should be well informed by an awareness of leading practice.

Tony Di Petta of Brock University, School of Education, suggests that "instructors should know the capabilities of the technology - this takes time but until instructors and designers know what they can do with technology and not by technology what we get is a transfer of face-to-face approaches to online work and while this is often OK it is not always productive or creative or using the technology in the best possible way."

One successful strategy is to spend a lot of time with faculty during the course creation process, before even considering course content. Talk about teaching and learning, about students and about aims, goals and objectives. This may help move the process from content delivery to learning strategies and to create active environments for web learning.

Vary technologies for increased student interest and course interactivity A student must have sufficient motivation, interest and independent learning ability to succeed with an online course. Strategies may include: varying the delivery mode - offering a combination of the best features of synchronous (time-dependent) video-based instruction along with asynchronous (time-independent) computer access to multimedia and the Internet; allowing students to proceed at own pace (perhaps assigning small groups to through a course together - if one gets ahead or behind he can join another group); offering diverse and interesting courses.

Provide Instructors With Training And Support

Professional Development

In the past two years online education has become much more interactive, and we now know that there is much more to a successful online course than simply taking a syllabus, lecture and some readings and placing them on a web site. Not surprisingly, the most important ingredient for a successful online course is effective teaching with clear course objectives, progression, hands on student management and course interactivity. Successful institutions provide instructors with professional development to develop these skills, and often team the instructors with instructional designers Additionally, it has been said that "Good teaching involves an element of performance, of casting oneself into the role of one who is not merely a voice for some thought, idea, argument, or event but who is also capable of causing thought and reflection in the listener (the student)." (Heath, Eugene F.)

What makes a good online course is having an overall pedagogical structure that encourages the principles educators believe in - activity, problem solving, exploration, shared construction of knowledge, etc. - and allows the instructor to apply some techniques that are crucial to this approach - pacing, scaffolding, modeling, situated learning, etc.

Some desired online skill competencies for instructors include the ability to project one's presence online and the ability to cope in a medium wherein feedback from the students may not be immediate. Instructing an online course means good writing skills are a must. Also, compared to conventional classroom teaching there are few if any non-verbal or emotional cues to let the online instructor know whether the students have really grasped the materials that are being presented. If the instructor is not prepared in advance for such limitations, the situation may lead to frustration.

Instructors may be interested in taking a short course on online teaching/ The May 1998 issue of the Virtual University Gazette contains a special guide to programs, both colleges and private firms, that teach/train professors to teach online. The Virtual University Gazette archive and subscription form is housed at http://www.geteducated.com.

Instructional Designers And Assistants

As previously mentioned, successful institutions often team instructors with instructional designers as the instrutors are placing their courses online. A large online endeavor with many instructors will need to have more than one instructional designer. Generally the instructors will require intensive assistance when developing their first online course, but will require less and less with each successive course. Depending on the course load or number of students participating in an online course, the educational institution may also wish to provide additional support in the form of teaching assistants. In this event the educational institution should consider if it will require a certain number of students enrolled in a course before additional support is provided.

Instructor Compensation Or Other Incentive The educational institution should consider the following questions. Will the institution provide compensation (and if so what type and how much) to faculty for either: A) modifying an existing course to be taught online? or B) the development of new online course? Will the institution provide additional compensation to faculty for teaching an online course? Will the compensation vary from the first time the course is taught to the second or third time?

Develop And Offer Quality Product/Content As course providers proliferate, course consumers will have more choices and will be more attracted to quality content that will meet education and career requirements than to a high-glitz, low-content course. A quality product will become the most important element for success.

Consider How To Assess Online Work Will participation in online discussions and group projects be assessed, and how might the assessment contribute to continuous learning and feedback? As with a traditional classroom, the best way to assess student and course progress is to know the student through the student's work and pay attention to student feedback. Good structuring has a strong writing focus, using essays for assessment instead of multiple choice, and when using groupware, student portfolios are collected.

Provide Access To Former Student References A good consumer will be interested in the opinions of prior students. All educational institutions should provide student references for their courses.

Estimate And Budget For Course Production And Delivery Costs An educational institution should consider the fixed costs of equipment purchase as well as ongoing maintenance costs including professional development, infrastructure upgrades, course maintenance, new course development, equipment or server maintenance and repair, and technical assistance staff time.

Tom Layton of Oregon's Cyberschool estimates that course development and maintenance, a fulltime job, costs about $5000 per course. However, he also notes that as teachers are begining to write their second and third courses they are requiring a lot less hand holding, thereby reducing development costs. These estimates do not include delivery costs or hardware and software costs.

Carla Melucci of Concord Consortium's Virtual High School Project reports a figure of $3500 to "train a teacher." "This includes one Lotus Notes client, technology and personnel costs associated with the 25-week training."

In both of these cases, the courses were developed by existing educational institutions with existing operating budgets and the courses were developed with the assistance of at least one fulltime technical support staff, and one fulltime course/teacher manager.

Conclusion

This Summer 1998 DLRN-J briefly highlighted some of the crucial first steps an educational institution should consider prior to embarking on online course development. Online course development requires careful planning with regard to knowing the target audience, the technology set-up complete with technical assistance and technical support staff, instructor training and support, consideration of the student work assessment process, and an estimation of the necessary budget. If an educational institution has carefully addressed each of these factors, the result should be a quality product that will result in its own market following. The Fall 1998 DLRN-J will review the elements necessary for online course development from the instructor's perspective.

CREDITS:

Assistance with this article provided by Tom Layton, CyberSchool in Oregon; Marianne Dugan, WestEd; Brian Rankin, WestEd; Julie Duffield, WestEd; Tony Di Petta, Brock University School of Education; and Carla Melucci of Concord Consortium's Virtual High School Project

RESOURCES:

Heath, Eugene F., Two Cheers and a Pint of Worry: A On-Line Course in Political and Social Philosophy, JALN Volume 2, Issue 1 (March 98).

Herbeson, Dr. Ellen; A Formative Evaluation of Distance Education: Experiences of Students and Instructors. NODE tfl site http://node.on.ca/forums/Index.cfm?

Mowen, Andrew J., and Sara C. Parks. 1997. Competetive Marketing of Distance Education: A Model for Placing Quality within a Strategic Planning Context. The American Journal of Distance Education 11 (3):27-40.

A Special Guide to Programs,Virtual University Gazette (May 1998)

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