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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 instance, content in the form of reading material, slide presentations or video lectures is paired with active learning strategies such as assignment or discussion questions, comprehension quiz questions or a reflection question posted in a private learning journal.
- Learner-Instructor Interaction: Students are given regular substantive opportunities to interact with you, the instructor. For instance, you might give individual feedback on a paper or assignment, as well as encourage students to ask questions via email or in person by phone, web/video conference, or chat.
- Learner-Learner Interaction: Students are encouraged to collaborate and communicate with each other. For example, you might require students to reflect on each other’s posts in the discussion board, review each other’s work or place learners into groups for short- or long-term projects.
Ideally, your course will include not just rich content, but also multiple opportunities for students to do something with that content. They will explore content, share ideas about their learning with each other, and engage with you for guidance and feedback.
#2 A high-quality online course conforms to established quality benchmarks.
While there are many ways in which the eCampus Center promotes best practice in online course design, we will emphasize the best practices and standards that are included in the Quality Matters™ program.
Quality Matters (QM) is a nationally recognized program that helps faculty design and develop high-quality online courses. QM offers a number of tools that you may use to develop, maintain, and review your online course. Chief among these tools is the Quality Matters Rubric–a set of 43 specific standards used to evaluate the design of online courses. These standards are related to the following topics:
- Course Overview and Introduction
- Learning Objectives (Competencies)
- Assessment and Measurement
- Instructional Materials
- Course Activities and Learner Interaction
- Course Technology
- Learner Support
- Accessibility and Usability
Please select the link below to download and read a PDF copy of the Quality Matters Rubric Standards. Take 5-10 minutes to read through the various standards and consider how you might apply the standards to your course design. If you have questions about any particular standard, please contact your instructional design consultant.
Quality Matters™ Rubric Standards (Fifth Edition, 2014)
Many accrediting bodies have endorsed the use of these Quality Matters standards as a way to demonstrate an institution’s (or program’s) commitment to quality assurance in its online courses. The eCampus Center actively promotes the use of the Quality Matters program in this seminar, and you will learn more about this program as you participate in various learning activities throughout the next few weeks. In this seminar, we will help you meet all of the Quality Matters standards in the design of your course. In addition, once your course has been taught for a semester, you will have the opportunity to participate in a peer-review process. During a Quality Matters peer review, three trained Boise State faculty reviewers will check the design of your online course to determine if it meets all of the Quality Matters standards. The peer reviewers will also provide helpful recommendations that may be used to further improve the course.
#3 A high-quality online course establishes and maintains a sense of community.
A sense of community grows within an online course as students help one another achieve common goals. Student achievement increases significantly when students work collaboratively (Hattie, 2012). This collaboration may occur through activities involving group work, group discussions, collaborative blogs, or group wikis. An online learning community focuses less on socializing and more on helping one another achieve the course learning objectives.
#4 A high-quality online course is accessible and usable.
Persons with disabilities should be able to access and use all of the course content, work with other students, and interact with the instructor. Federal civil rights statutes–including Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the applicable provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990–require the university to build courses that will allow accommodations to be made for students with disabilities. Boise State Policy #1060 echoes this requirement. Accessibility and usability of course content is also one of the eight standards of the Quality Matters rubric that we apply to each of the online courses developed through the eCampus Center, in accordance with Boise State Policy #1075. Designing accessible and usable online courses does take some extra effort, but you will find that doing so not only improves the course for students with disabilities, it improves the course for all students.
#5 A high-quality online course is characterized by an easy-to-navigate modular design.
We recommend that you build your online course as a series of weekly modules. Faculty that use Blackboard with their web-enhanced courses will often put readings in one folder, assignments in another, assessments in a third, and so on. We have found that this organization does not work very well for fully online courses. Instead, we encourage you to create modules in which all of the coursework for one week is organized sequentially in its own area. This lets students know what they need to do and the order in which they need to do it.
While the five characteristics listed above are not the only important characteristics of a high-quality course, they are key design considerations that will drive much of the design of your course. Your instructional design consultant can provide you with more information about each characteristic and suggest ways you can design your course to reflect these characteristics. With these characteristics in mind, you are now ready to proceed to the next learning activity in this module.
