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| Monochromatic design. (Photo, and design, by me.) |
Already in 2001, Swan (2001)
found that there were two factors that influenced both students’ perceived learning
and their satisfaction with the online experience: the clarity of the course
design and the quality of communication, both between course participants and
course leaders. Several other studies have also pointed out the importance of
course design and communication (e.g. Brindley,
Blaschke & Walti, 2009; Capdeferro & Romero, 2012; Tseng & Ku, 2011;
Thompson & Ku, 2006). Brindley,
Blaschke and Walti (2009) identifies seven strategies to improve the quality of
group collaboration that includes both course design variables and course
leadership skills:
1. Facilitate learner
readiness for group work and provide scaffolding to build skills.
2. Establish a healthy
balance between structure (clarity of task) and learner autonomy (flexibility
of task).
3. Nurture the
establishment of learner relationships and sense of community.
4. Monitor group activities
actively and closely.
5. Make the group task
relevant for the learner.
6. Choose tasks that are
best performed by a group.
7. Provide sufficient time.
(Brindley, Blaschke & Walti, 2009)
The
first strategy is an important one I find since a better introduction to, for
example, how PBL group work is defined in this course, probably would have lessened
my own initial confusion and frustration. Capdeferro and Romero (2012) suggest
that students should be provided with an introduction to online collaborative online
learning and effective teamwork before beginning their course work, which I think
is a great idea, but whether to do that or not, depends on the learning goals in
the course, of course. I still don’t really understand what the learning goals
in this course are, but I know where the focus of my own learning was during
the course: in the PBL group work. The content of the course coincided with
that process to some extent but not fully, which means that some of the course
content most likely passed me by completely. And again, that makes me wonder about
the course goals and the thought behind the design of the course.
As I already mentioned in the last post,
Capdeferro and Romero (2012) point out all the issues that we struggled
with in our PBL group: time, effort, prior knowledge, volume and quality of
work. Now, after the fact, I realize that we all had unrealistic expectations
of the volume and quality of work that we’d be able to produce because we didn’t
explicitly establish any common goals: “establishing common goals is part of the construction of common grounds
since actions cannot be interpreted without referring to (shared) goals, and,
reciprocally, goal discrepancies are often revealed through disagreement on
action” (Capdeferro & Romero, 2012). One way to establish common goals is by
writing a team agreement and according to Thomson and Ku’s (2006) results, what
is important in that process is to keep the discussion of the team agreement
alive during the whole course so that the original agreement that is
established at the beginning of the course can be revised continually based on the challenges and problems the group encounter during the course. A team agreement was used in this course, but since I missed a couple of meetings at the start of the course due to illness, I was not involved in the process of formulating the agreement. Also, we didn't revise the agreement during the course. Another
factor that an active team agreement most likely enhances is the level of trust
in the group, and the level of trust in a group has been shown to have a strong
positive relationship with both team performance and teamwork satisfaction
(Tseng & Ku, 2011).
So, after this brief odyssey into what I've learned about online course design, let’s go back to the course design process. A model of
learning that I’ve found very useful is Knowles, Holton & Swanson’s (2005) model of adult learning that they
call andragogy which is a term that reflects the fact that pedagogy in Greek means
“child-learning” whereas adragogy means “man-learning”. The main idea of the
model is that adults are self-directed and expect to take responsibility for their decisions and thus, courses that are intended to cater to adult learners – as are
all university courses – need to accommodate for these aspects.
(Knowles,
Holton & Swanson, 2005)
The model states that
the goals and purposes for learning need to take into account individual and situational
differences and needs to be based on six core adult learning principles. The first principle
states that the learner needs to know the why, what and how of the learning, which
is why I wrote earlier that the way to start the course design process is to ask
questions. And the best place to start is to start with the “why”. Why would a learner want to
learn the content of the course? – the answer to that question is the most
important one and it needs to be crystal clear for the course
designer and they, in turn, need to be able to communicate the answer to their course participants.
My experience is that if this step is successful, there are rarely any problems
with motivation – neither to learn nor to complete the assignments. Then there are
the two questions concerning the “what” and the “how” of the course – what is
the content of the course supposed to be and how is the learner supposed to
learn it. The “what” depends on the goals and purposes of the course which may
be more or less pre-determined, but the “how” is usually flexible. When
considering the “how”, it can be a good idea to revisit Brindley, Blaschke & Walti’s (2009) strategies, and especially strategies
two, five, and six:
2. Establish a healthy
balance between structure (clarity of task) and learner autonomy (flexibility
of task).
5. Make the group task
relevant for the learner.
6. Choose tasks that are
best performed by a group.
(Brindley, Blaschke & Walti, 2009)
These strategies work
just as well when designing courses that aren't based on collaborative
learning since a balance between the clarity and the flexibility of the task is
most often preferable in all learning situations and to create tasks that are relevant
for the learner is paramount in all course design. And, finally, if group work has
been defined as a course goal or has been determined to be the most beneficial
way to learn the content, take special care to create suitable and relevant group
assignments. When you have the answers to the why, what, and how of the course, you have a solid structure to build on.
It is true that I didn’t
feel inspired by this course, but attending the course re-ignited the fire of
inspiration in me about course design. It reminded me of how incredibly important
it is to invest time, care, and effort in the design process, and for that I am
truly grateful!
Brindley,
J., Blaschke, L. M., & Walti, C. (2009). Creating Effective Collaborative Learning Groups in an
Online Environment. The International Review of Research in Open and
Distributed Learning, 10(3). doi: 10.19173/irrodl.v10i3.675.
Capdeferro,
N., & Romero, M. (2012). Are online learners frustrated with collaborative
learning experiences? The International Review of Research in Open and
Distributed Learning, 13(2), 26-44. doi: 10.19173/irrodl.v13i2.1127.
Knowles,
M., Holton, E., & Swanson, R. (2005). The Adult Learner – The Definitive Classic in Adult Education and Human
Resource Development. Amsterdam, Boston, Singapore, Sydney: Elsevier.
Swan,
K. (2001) Virtual interaction: Design factors affecting student satisfaction
and perceived learning in asynchronous online courses. Distance Education,
22(2), 306-331. doi: 10.1080/0158791010220208th.
Thompson,
L., & Ku, H-Y. (2006). A Case Study of Online Collaborative Learning. Quarterly
Review of Distance Education, 7(4), 361–375.
Tseng,
H., & Ku, H.-Y. (2011). The relationships between trust, performance,
satisfaction, and development progressions among virtual teams. Quarterly
Review of Distance Education, 12(2), 81-94.
