Online learning has emerged over the last several years, sometimes as a support to traditional classes (blended learning) and sometimes as a replacement solution for those students who can’t physically attend classes due to professional, health, or personal reasons. The main challenge in designing an online course is to preserve the value of traditional learning plus the benefits mentioned above. To this end, Vai and Sosulski attempt to devise a set of design principles every course designer should follow in order to produce the most structured and engaging learning content.
The authors emphasize the importance of learning outcomes in shaping the course content. The idea is not new and in fact had been initially devised for on-site courses. The main theoretical underpinning of the outcomes-based curriculum is provided [1]. This model is known as constructive alignment and is defined as: “a principle used for devising teaching and learning activities, and assessment tasks, that directly address the intended learning outcomes in a way not typically achieved in traditional lectures, tutorial classes and examinations” [2].
Chapters 1 and 2 introduce the book by discussing the importance of online learning and the features of a learning management system (LMS). Chapter 3 discusses the main characteristics of textual components for an online course, including using labels, choosing the right tone, and being clear and concise. The book then summarizes the best practices in organizing the visual aspect of the different components of the online course (chapter 4). Although those design basics are rather generic to any online content, they are still applicable to an online course.
The authors then draw the attention of the reader to the plethora of available collaborative tools generally bundled with LMSs, including discussion forums, a shared knowledge base, multimedia, and blogs, all to support student engagement, and independent and collaborative learning (chapters 5 through 7). Assessment and feedback are discussed in chapter 8. Here, the authors mainly transfer best practices in assessment and feedback from traditional courses to the online ones. They also emphasize using the constructive alignment principle discussed earlier. Finally, putting it all together is discussed in chapters 9 and 10. This includes structuring course content online and varying the use of learning objects such text, audio, and video.
Overall, the book doesn’t come up with breakthrough ideas for building online courses. It rather transfers many of the well-established practices in building an on-site course to the design of online ones. This is not a shortcoming, but I must admit that I was expecting to learn about brand new techniques dictated by the nature of online courses. I believe that the best way to end up with a book in this direction is to carry out thorough research on the online learning experience, devise the issues specific to that context, and then come up with a set of best practices. Having said that, the book is still very useful and well written. Each chapter ends with a checklist to be used by any course designer, removing the need to go through all the details of the book.
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