The Myth about Online Course Development: “A Faculty Member Can Individually Develop and Deliver an Effective Online Course”

Summary:
This article discusses the challenges that faulty members face in designing online courses. Online courses are vastly different than traditional courses. Faculty members should be paired up with an “instructional designer” who has knowledge of pedagogy and technology. As many online courses best achieve their objectives when asking students to construct knowledge through discussion and application of knowledge, the designer of the course must consider the roles of the student and the notion that faculty who are subject-matter experts should not be the ones to design the course alone. With so many concerns and questions to address in the development of an online course, it is best to not take the “Lone Ranger” approach but to have teamwork to build the best possible online course. Some essential questions to consider include:
• What is the best use of the faculty member, an expensive institutional resource?
• Do we have a process for strategically investing in course development?
• Do we confuse providing content with creating a learning environment or delivering a course?
• What is the return we hope to see from our investment in course development?

Reaction:
I found this article to be interesting, though not very useful to me as an elementary school teacher. As a student in online courses, it’s interesting to think about what goes into building an online course. I’ve had many, many online courses and some I found to be well structured and useful while others were a lot of reading, posting to the discussion board and paper and pencil testing. The first type of course I described were some of my favorites because I felt I learned the most. I think that the authors had a good point when they stated that subject-matter expert faculty should not plan an online course alone but rather with a team to provide the best possible learning experience for the students involved.

Oblinger D.G. & Hawkins, B.L. (2006). The myth about online course development. In J. Hirschbuhl & J. Kelley (Eds.), Computers in education (5-6). Dubuque, IA: McGraw Hill.