Course Development eBook
Following a discussion about how many online courses we had developed in the last few years, my friend and colleague, Dr. Danielle Babb decided we would share our approach to developing online courses using a template approach. The result of our collaboration was an e-book –Online Course Development: a Template Approach for Trainers, Professors, and Learning Entrepreneurs.
Between the two of us, Dr. Babb and I have developed nearly a hundred online course syllabi. I can remember the first syllabus I developed for an online course; it took me about one month. With experience, I was able to reduce the time I needed to complete a course syllabus. But once I created a template to guide the development process, I was able to create a course syllabus in about half as much time as before – with more consistent quality. Through our collaboration, Dr. Babb and I created a comprehensive template and development process that will produce high-quality course syllabi in a fraction of the time.
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With help of several subject matter experts, I was able to develop over 30 course syllabi in 2008. These new courses have been well-received by our students and have passed the careful scrutiny of our accreditors.
Course Development with Templates
The purpose of developing course templates is to establish a basic model that universities and subject matter experts can use to guide the revisions to existing course syllabi as well as the development of course syllabi for new courses. By using a course development template, universities can ensure a standard structure for their courses while allowing the customization of course syllabi needed to reflect the unique learning objectives and subject matter of various subject disciplines. The use of a course development template can help an online university achieve the following four objectives:
- A common look and feel will reduce student anxiety and stress as they progress from course to course in their academic programs.
- A consistent course structure will facilitate the university’s ability make accurate assessments of students’ work and improve learning outcomes.
- New courses can be developed much more efficiently with the use of course templates.
- Course templates will make it much easier to coordinate with faculty and other subject matter experts who will assist us in developing new courses.
This final objective warrants some additional explanation. Online universities need and welcome the input of their faculty and other subject matter experts in the course development process. However, they cannot expect all of these potential collaborators to possess the knowledge required related to learning platforms or course development. Philosophically online universities should not outsource total responsibility for course development. Through the use of templates online universities can engage our faculty and other subject matter experts in a collaborate process of course development, the responsibility for which, the online university maintains.
The Importance of the Syllabus to Online Learning
In the world of traditional universities, professors are by far the most important element in the educational process. Of course there are other factors involved, but the professors are the “stars” that are the center of attention and are primarily responsible for students achieving learning objectives. In a traditional “brick and mortar” university, the professors have total or almost total control over developing the syllabi for their courses as they see fit. This means the style, format, elements varied significantly by department, academic subject, even by professor. In this academic culture where professors control course design, they traditionally “owned” their course materials – both physically and in a legal sense.
Traditional universities and online universities that were among the first to experiment with offering courses online, quickly realized an online course needed to be structured quite differently that a traditional course taught in a face-to-face basis. Not only did the course syllabus for an online course have to be different, it had to be much “more.” In a face-to-face classroom, the professor could explain what students needed to know, students could easily ask questions of their professors and obtain immediate answers.
In online education, the course syllabus must play a much more important role. A syllabus for an online course must anticipate what students need to know and do in order to complete the course, without depending on much, if any, face-to-face interaction between students and their professor. Not to diminish the role of the online professor, but the online course syllabus and related materials are simply much more critical to the achievement of a course’s learning outcomes than those used in a traditional face-to-face educational environment.
Online professors play a critical role, but I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that in online education, the online course syllabus plays the “starring role.” The other factor worth mentioning is the reality that in the world of online education, the online university – not the professor – typically “owns” the online course syllabus. As we will discuss below, however, the ability to develop online courses is a valuable competency to possess if you are an online professor, a training professional, or learning entrepreneur.
Why We Need More Online Course Developers in Online Education
Online universities need assistance with course development because of the demand for new courses and the need to revise courses every few years. The online education business is more competitive than ever. Traditional and online universities compete for students by offering the choice and flexibility need to allow better alignment between academic programs and career objectives. Not too many years ago, for example, a typical MBA program would consist of about twelve courses. Now universities are offering a variety of specialized MBA program like MBA-Health Care or Green MBA programs. Still other MBA programs are offered with eight or so “core” courses and dozens of other graduate courses from which students can select in order to customize their degree program. This approach allows MBA students to create specialty areas of study in Information Systems, Business Intelligence, Human Resource Management, on some other specialty that specifically reflects that student’s professional objectives. As a result, an MBA program might have 30 or more courses.
Universities must also regularly revise their courses based on new textbook editions. The major textbook publishers release new editions to their textbooks quite frequently – sometimes every two to three years. These publishers want to provide the latest thinking, the best practices, and the most recent research to ensure their offerings are competitive. They also realize, however, that there is a market for used textbooks and many students will not pay over $125 for a new textbook if they can buy a used version of the same textbook for a fraction of that cost. One way publishers limit the used textbook market is by frequently introducing new textbook editions and discontinuing the distribution of the previous edition. As a result, online universities must revise their course syllabi each time a new textbook edition is released. Some of the revisions are relatively minor and revising the online course syllabus is a fairly simple matter, but in some cases a new textbook edition requires a major overhaul of the course and its syllabus.
The need for new and better academic programs, combined with a faster and faster cycle of new textbook editions, creates an enormous demand for course development expertise. A typical online university might have offer 400 online courses at the present time, but they could easily need to develop 50 new courses next year and revise up to 100 courses.
Some universities employ full-time course developers. That makes sense in terms of efficiency and ensuring consistency. However, there are also advantages to having the same person who develops a course also teach it. An online professor, who is a subject matter expert in the topics covered by the course, is the best-qualified person to make judgments about matters related to course content. Online professors can more efficiently teach a course if they developed it. These professors will likely not require any assistance from their Dean or other personnel from the university because they are so intimately familiar with the course syllabus and learning materials. The online university’s accreditors will also be more comfortable when a professor, who is qualified to teach the course, played an important role in developing the course syllabus.
Some online universities do not employ course developers on a full-time basis because they prefer to use online professors to also develop the courses they teach. You might say this arrangement is an example of a “just in time” production system. The use of course development templates allows the online university to take advantage of using online professors as course developers – while also achieving consistency in the look and feel of courses. The combination of having an online professor, who is a subject matter expert qualified to teach the course, using a state-of-the-art course template to develop an online course syllabus is the best of both worlds.
The Learning Outcomes Orientation in Course Development
In recent years there has been a dramatic change in how we measure the success of universities. Where the quality of education in the past was largely subjective, the achievement of specific learning outcomes are now the focal point of assessment and evaluation. Beginning with the Federal government’s mandate, which is also being strongly supported by all accreditors, universities (both traditional and online universities) must now document the learning outcomes that are achieved through their academic programs and individual courses. No online program wants to be stuck with a conditional accreditation or no accreditation at all – so learning outcomes are now the focus of attention.
Learning outcomes address what learners will know or be able to do as a result of engaging in the learning programs offered by online universities. Learning outcomes describe a desired condition or – that is, the knowledge, skills, and abilities developed by their online students. While online universities still care about the various aspects of “quality” in their academic programs, they are now making learning outcomes the overriding priority objective in their planning and management of academic programs. Online universities are now focusing on the specific competencies their students will develop and relating these to learning outcomes described in their online courses. Learning outcomes are being applied to guide degree program definition, course content, and faculty evaluation. The importance of learning outcomes coincides with a greater interest in holding educators accountable, not just for the quality of academic programs in a general sense, but also for what these programs can deliver for students.
The interaction of learning outcomes and increased product differentiation has resulted in most universities, online universities in particular, rapidly developing new degree programs that are presented to new students on the basis of the know-how they will be able to develop along with the knowledge they will acquire. This is basic Marketing 101 that tells us to “sell the benefits, not the product.” Students are encouraged to enroll in a certain degree program so they can develop the specific competencies they will need to achieve their career goals.
The emphasis of learning outcomes cascades into the learning objectives that are stated for each course in the curriculum of a degree program. We now typically find each of the courses’ Modules to have learning objectives that relate to the courses’ learning objectives. The reading assignments, discussion forum questions, written assignments, quizzes, case studies, research projects, etc., should logically link back to the appropriate Modules’ learning objectives. Learning outcomes most definitely impact course design.
The Three Customers of Course Development
Universities, students, and instructors all want online courses that are well-structured, consistently formatted, and provide continuity when comparing different courses. Online universities are rapidly developing new programs and courses to provide more options and flexibility for students. Universities are also committed to outcomes-based approaches for planning, developing, and evaluating their academic programs.
Online students are looking to find or “customize” academic programs that are the most closely aligned with their career ambitions. Students involved in distance education tend to also have work and/or family responsibilities, so they have multiple sets of priorities to shuffle. They want to know specifically what their schedule and deliverable requirements must be, but they also would like to have some flexibility in case unexpected events in their person or work lives occur. Students are looking for frequent contact with their professors and meaningful exchanges of ideas with students as well as their instructors.
Professors who teach online are concerned about the time they devote to teaching. They realize the importance of quickly responding to students, but like their students, they need to balance multiple priorities. Developing the courses they teach make a great deal sense for professors. This way they can include in their course designs, more of the activities they enjoy while minimizing those that are less rewarding or interesting.
The best way to meet the objectives, needs, and expectations that we have described above is by using a course development template and applying a “tried and true” set of guidelines for using this template. You don’t have to be an expert in curriculum development to develop an online course. You do need to be a subject matter expert in the area for which you are developing a course. So, assuming you are a subject matter expert and want to develop an online course, let’s move on to a discussion of templates.
Online Training and Online Course Development
Many of the same issues discussed about the development of the online course syllabus apply to online training programs offered by corporations. It makes sense for companies to establish their unique template to guide the development of online courses. The actual development of course syllabi can be more easily outsourced and supervised if a template approach is used.
These days there are tremendous pressures to reduce costs. Training budgets are one of the first to get slashed. After all, training is very expensive. Often times the cost of trainers is just the tip of the iceberg compared with the travel costs and productivity lost due to time off from work to attend training sessions.
In addition to the cost issue, there is concern about the quality of corporate learning. Accenture, one of the world’s largest and most respected consulting firms, has been researching the characteristics and business practices that contribute to and detract from high performance. Accenture’s research indicates most senior executives now view people and workforce-related issues as a critical competitive differentiator in defining high performance companies. Unfortunately, Accenture’s 2006 survey found “…a very small percentage of executives, including those leading the HR and learning functions, said they were very satisfied with the support those functions provided to not only the organization at large, but to what executives described as their company’s most critical workforces.” Accenture recommends corporate HR and learning functions enable and facilitate people development as well as understand where the learning gaps and shortfalls really are.
Based on my experience and a review of the most current research, I believe many HR organizations are failing to adequately define the workforce competencies required to successfully implement their companies’ strategic plan, assess existing workforce competencies, then documenting and analyzing workforce competency gaps. Without accurate, comprehensive, and timely analysis of there competency gaps, how can learning needs be prioritized? Without this prioritization of learning needs, how can the most critically needed learning programs be developed and implemented on a timely basis? We know how rapidly our business environments are changing, thus demanding new or significant adjustments to corporate strategies. How can learning professional keep up with the changing learning needs resulting from these changes in strategic management within their organizations?
Re-Focusing Corporate Training
In my view many, if not most companies, need to refocus their learning functions on strategically identifying and prioritizing learning needs. Not only is this critically important, it is not a set of activities and responsibilities that can or should be outsourced or assigned to outside consultants.
Once the learning needs are accurately prioritized, then learning functions should seek ways to reduce the cost of developing and implementing learning programs. I believe one of the best ways to achieve these cost reductions is through the online delivery of these learning programs.
There is a growing body of research that demonstrates the effectiveness of online learning. The cost advantages relate importantly to reducing travel expenses and significantly diminishing learners’ time away from important job responsibilities. I predict we will witness a greater partnership between corporate and external learning organizations like online universities and small firms that specialize in online learning for corporate clients. In this partnership, those on corporate training staffs will focus their attention on analyzing the workforce competencies required to implement their organization’s strategy, identifying competency gaps and defining training needs. Corporate training staffs can then outsource the much of the work to develop and deliver training programs. Corporate trainers can then assess the training outcomes and re-assess their company’s training needs once again. In this scenario corporate trainers will be more strategically focused and can add greater value to their companies, while outsourcing much of the responsibility for training program development and delivery.
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