Twelve Important Questions to Answer Before You Offer a Web Based Curriculum
Since I am in the process of building a distance education I thought this article from the Online Journal of Distance Education Administration was appropriate. I think the most interesting thing is that the article was published in the summer of 2001 which was the height of the "Oh my God online education will ruin our colleges scare. Since not all of the sections are extremely relevant today I'll discuss only a few. Rather than a running commentary I will list the twelve questions with discussion.Will the Web curriculum offered be congruent with the institution’s mission and strategy?
Do you have administrative support?
Are there institutional obstacles to adopting a Web curriculum?
Are the students ready to handle the self discipline required? This question still plagues us today. I've read conflicting studies about the drop rate on distance ed courses but I know that it is twice as high in undergraduate courses as compared to graduate.
How will you handle intellectual property issues?
I wonder if this is actually an issue any more?
How will you compensate instructors for offering or administering Web courses?
Since theoretically you could have a very small class or a huge class the traditional measures of what constitutes a course no longer apply. I wonder how universities handle this now?
Do you have clear, well-defined criteria for selecting the classes to be offered through the Web?
What facilities or capabilities are available to assist in the preparation and delivery of course materials?
What methods will be used to deliver class content?
How will student progress be assessed?
The author specifically discusses the paranoia associated with "It is difficult if not impossible to reliably ascertain a participant’s identity when communicating over the Internet."
Do your students have the skills necessary to use the Web and participate in class?
Today the question is "Do the students have a computer with high speed internet access." I think schools and universities have done a moderately good job of preparing most students for the web.
Where will the class materials be maintained?
You can read the whole article at: http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/summer42/mcalister42.html
posted by Dallas Becker @ 8:50 PM
1 Comments:
Interesting preface to your review...and very appropriate! We have definitely moved away from the "ruin our colleges scare" days. Even k-12 online courses have moved away from this reaction.
>How will you handle intellectual property issues?
This is still very much an issue, and growing more so everyday. In higher education, typically the deal was "you use university resources to create it, we own it (or co-own it)." Now, many universities are coming out with copyright options that give faculty ownership over their multimedia or online materials, but provide the university unlimited use rights to the content. Here's one I found really quick on Google at Austin Community College: http://irt.austincc.edu/copyright/ownerform.htm
>Since theoretically you could have a very small class or a huge class the traditional measures of what constitutes a course no longer apply.
Not exactly true. For example, the curriculum I created for this course was designed knowing I would have 20 students max. The level of interactivity and collaboration I use would never work in a section of 200 students, for example. A course that size would have to be redesigned with less one-on-one support, more multiple choice tests that are graded automatically by the LMS, etc.
>The author specifically discusses the paranoia associated with "It is difficult if not impossible to reliably ascertain a participant’s identity when communicating over the Internet."
I think this is more true in instances where students don't meet in person at all (like they do in hybrid courses), or where video conferencing isn't used. It would be hard to "fake" video participation in a class, for example. One approach I use to overcome plagarism issues is to customize assignments with very criteria very specific to our course.
Great questions, Dallas!
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