Congratulations! You’ve responded to the unprecedented need to ensure continuity of instruction. You’ve transitioned to the online learning environment, adapted your content, and delivered it successfully. Now what? Take the next step and examine course design features and instructional practices that support substantial evidence-based impacts on successful online learning.
According to an estimate by Georgetown professor Bryan Alexander, by mid-March 2020, college closures in the US due to the pandemic had impacted over 14 million students (Hess, 2020). Some classes were cancelled, but the vast majority were moved online. Instruction for nearly 55 million primary and secondary school children (Heubeck, 2020) shifted online at this same time. Everyone it seemed was learning – and teaching – online.
Efforts to transition content to the virtual environment to ensure its continued delivery were swift and admirable. Educators who had never facilitated online instruction were quickly acquiring necessary skills – often supported by few colleagues with limited experience. Individuals with expertise in online course design and facilitation found their skills in great demand. In a few weeks’ time, students of all ages were learning online and their teachers were providing, in many cases, adequate instruction.
The need to facilitate learning online will continue. Now what? How do educators take the next step to implement instructional practices that support substantial evidence-based impacts on successful online learning? How will they select practices that are proven to support student performance? How will institutions choose criteria to evaluate online course quality? Do they know which available comprehensive recommendations for instructional practices specifically identify factors that impact student performance?
Among the best practices and available comprehensive rubrics for online course design and delivery, there is no clear, empirical link between the indicators these describe and student learning outcomes (Jaggars & Xu, 2016). For that reason, it’s difficult for course designers and instructors to choose among recommended practices to develop and deliver content. Similarly, institutions are challenged to select criteria for evaluating course quality.
Recent research (Jaggars & Xu, 2016, as cited in Xu & Xu, 2020, p. 385), however, provides some direction for identifying which course design features predict better online learning. By grouping the available comprehensive recommendations for course design and instructional practices into four specific categories, the researchers were able to measure the impact of each area on student-end-of semester performance. The four categories are
- organization and presentation;
- learning objectives and alignment;
- interpersonal interaction; and
- technology.
Among these categories, only the quality of interpersonal interaction related positively and significantly to student grades (Jaggars & Xu, 2016).
There is a persistent and increasing need to develop online courses that support student achievement of learning outcomes. By examining which online design features predict better learning, online course designers and teachers will be ready to take the next step. They will understand the link between well-designed interpersonal interaction and student performance. They will be well poised to implement high quality strategies for interpersonal interaction in their online design and teaching practices.
References
Hess, A. (2020, March 26). How coronavirus dramatically changed college for over 14 million students. CNBC. Retrieved from https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/26/how-coronavirus-changed-college-for-over...
Heubeck, E. (2020, April 20). Virtual teaching: Skill of the future? Or not so much? Education Week. Retrieved from https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2020/04/20/virtual-teaching-skill-of-...
Jaggars, S. S., & Xu, D. (2016). How do online course design features influence student performance? Computers & Education, 95, 270–284.
Xu, D., & Xu, Y. (2020). Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research: The ambivalence about distance learning in higher education. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31365-4_10