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When I first entered the field of online education back in 1997, the first 56.6 kps modems were appearing in homes. Most institutions had no more than a handful of online courses. Universities treated educators with an interest in “distance education” with either suspicion or indifference. Online education was largely a faculty-led effort; few university Strategic Plans included more than a passing reference to online education.
Obviously, much has changed. But one aspect of online higher education remains largely intact: the way that traditional colleges and universities go about designing, creating, and financing in-house online course development.
Now, as in 1997, individual instructors assume the bulk of the responsibility for course design and development. Support from an instructional designer and technical staff is available, but their impact is limited by availability and the conventions of academic work. Funds for course development are similarly constrained, due to the limited revenue that can be generated from offering a single course at a single institution.
This “cottage industry” approach took hold not because we thought it was the best way to create a great online learning experience for students, but because it fit with the institution’s existing organization and processes — one based on the classroom model. Mirroring the classroom model made the shift to online relatively painless.
As a consequence, though, the quality of the online courses produced within our traditional colleges and universities falls to professionals who were not hired on the basis of their knowledge of graphic design, information architecture, programming, or the learning sciences — the very qualities required to consistently create great online courses. As has long been the case for classroom education, the overarching, but implicit assumption is that putting course design in the hands of people with deep subject matter knowledge translates into a good learning experience for students. There’s little evidence that this is the case in the classroom, and it’s less true for online education, where a whole new host of skills and knowledge are required.
By simply transferring the existing roles, responsibilities and financial model to the online context, allowed institutions to quickly “put courses online”. But it also all but ensured that these institutions are unable to produce more sophisticated and ambitious online courses that support better learning outcomes or reduce costs. Ironically, it restricts the use of the very instructional techniques, resources, and new business models that research claims can improve the value of higher education — research produced by our universities.
Via Miloš Bajčetić
