Recommendations for Virtual College Course Development
People who have never taught in a virtual environment sometimes find it difficult to get started. They often have questions about course organization, content presentation, and learning assessment. Simonson, Smaldino, Alright, and Zvacek (2006) recommend four guidelines for course developing and teaching at a distance: organizational guidelines, content guidelines, instruction guidelines, and assessment guidelines.
Figure 1. Four Guidelines for Distance Education
Organizational Guidelines
Unlike on-campus classes, there are no regular class sessions in a distance learning environment. Simonson, Smaldino, Alright, and Zvacek’s (2006) recommendations provide ways to organize courses with equal numbers of semester credits in terms of comprehensiveness of content coverage for all programs, topics, and media.
Simonson, Smaldino, Alright, and Zvacek (2006) propose that the topic be the fundamental building block for instruction since distance learning courses often do not have regular class sessions. Their proposed Unit-Module-Topic (U-M-T) Model can help course developers to organize instructional content for distance learning courses.
A brief explanation of the terms, including unit, module, and topic is as follows:
Module is a major subdivision of a unit that is the basis for several class sessions. A module is covered in about a week of instruction and study. A module is composed of three-to-five topics.
Topic is an important idea that supports a module. A topic would be a lesson or an assignment. Each topic has an expected learning outcome.
A typical 3-credit course has 3 units, 12 modules, 48 topics, and 48 learning outcomes.
Content Guidelines
Traditionally, instructional content in distance education is often delivered to distance learners primarily through text-based messages. However, high-quality courses should emphasize the use of various forms of visual media to offer instructional content. Graphical representations, videos, and audios are important to a well-designed course. Content is organized into topics, and topics are combined into modules, and modules are used to form units. To put it in a simple way, the Virtual College courses should use more media.
Instructional content in the Virtual College courses can be presented in the following ways:
· Readings in the text or other written materials
· Videos supplied on CD, DVD, or streamed
· Audio recordings of speeches or presentations supplied on a CD, as an email attachment or streamed
· Screen-capture recordings of tutorials or presentations (e.g., Camtasia)
· Recorded presentations using PowerPoint with prerecorded audio (e.g., Articulate Presenter)
· Synchronous chats with content experts (e.g., Blackboard, DyKnow, instant messaging, etc.)
Instruction Guidelines
Based on the literature of distance education and review of quality distance learning courses, Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, and Zvacek (2006) propose the following guidelines for the pace of instruction and interaction management:
· One module per week
· Instructor email students each week
· One synchronous chat per week
· Two-to-three threaded discussion questions per topic, or six-to-ten questions per week
· Instructor comments on discussions as part of threaded discussion board
· Progress reports such as grades submitted to students every two weeks
Assessment Guidelines
Assessment is measurement of learning, and it is directly related to learning outcomes. A learning outcome is observable and measurable. Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, and Zvacek (2006) suggest that there should be at least one learning outcome for each topic. A 3-credit course has the following assessment strategies:
· One examination
· One 10-page paper
· One project
· Three quizzes
· Three small assignments such as short paper, article review, and activity report
· Graded threaded discussions, email, and chats