The instructional design of an economics course taught in online/blended format
Colleges and Universities are increasingly experimenting with fully online (no in class meetings), and blended (combination of online lecture and in-class discussion) as a way to meet the growing demand from students for increased educational opportunities outside the traditional classroom. This paper will discuss the Quality Matters Standards for design of online courses and discuss how they can be implemented for online/blended classes with a large number of sections. Some potential difficulties will be identified and empirical estimates of the effect on learning outcomes will be discussed.
The paper will describe the key components of the course design of several online/hybrid courses we have co-designed with an instructional design team, and have taught over several semesters. Key components for a successful online course include: Course Goals and Objectives, Assessments, Interactive Learning Activities, Course Content, and the Course Website. An important part of the course goals and objectives is that they are clearly stated for each learning module, and they be reinforced though out the assessments, learning activities, and course content. Assessments come in various forms, and a strategy is scaffold them following Bloom’s learning pyramid bringing the learner from comprehension of the material to demonstrating mastery of the material. A strategy for interactive exercises, additional to scaffolding, is that they engage the learner, and promote participation in the course. While it is standard to employ homework assignments from Aplia, MyEconLab etc. other user created interactive activities will be discussed. For example, easy to create graphing exercises using Google draw will be demonstrated. Extensions of the graphing activity will be demonstrated: how students can post the diagrams in threaded discussions; and, how instructors can use polling tools such as the free PollEveryWhere.com tool for online evaluation of submitted diagrams. The creation of course content will be discussed including use of multi-media, YouTube videos, and strategies for making PowerPoint presentations less deadly. The discussion of the course website will cover strategies for presenting and linking the activities, assessments, and course content within the Blackboard CMS. The paper will conclude with a discussion of empirical estimates of some of these features on learning outcomes.