Designing Effective Instructional Strategies for Online Courses

Feng-Qi Lai, Ph.D.

Department of Curriculum, Instruction, & Media Technology

Indiana State University, USA

eslai@isugw.indstate.edu

(812) 237-2934

Cheryl A. Dugas

David R. Hofmeister, Ed.D.

Department of Curriculum, Instruction, & Media Technology

Indiana State University, USA

Abstract: More and more courses in higher education are delivered online. Since the learning context changes from traditional face-to-face instruction, instructional strategies for online courses need to change in order to provide effective instruction for learners. Unfortunately, many online course instructors are not trained to design effective instructional strategies for online courses, and few guidelines are available for them to use. This paper discusses key strategies that can support effective teaching and learning in the online learning environment, and describes how these strategies were employed in an on-line graduate level Instructional Design course.

With the advent of e-learning technology, for many reasons, courses in higher education are increasingly moved to an online environment. According to the instructional design principle, media selection is affected by the learning task, learners’ characteristics, and the learning context. During a class discussion in an Instructional Design class, a student pointed out that teachers’ preferences and skills also had a big impact on media selection. If a teacher does not know how to use the hardware and/or software, he/she will not use it for teaching the class. However, media selection is also affected by the attributes of the potential media. Now the most commonly used courseware for distance education are online courses using WebCT or Blackboard CourseInfo. Whether or not an instructor is willing to teach a course online, the trend suggests that every instructor, sooner or later, will be involved in teaching online courses or supplementing courses with on-line materials. However, instructional strategies that support effective teaching and learning in these specific learning environments have barely been discussed.

A big portion (page 112 – page 315) of the Instructional Design book by Smith and Ragan (1999) discusses instructional strategies, covering strategies for problem-solving, declarative knowledge, concept learning, procedures, cognitive strategies, attitude change, motivation, psychomotor skills, etc. What we are going to discuss in this paper goes beyond the strategies for different learning domains.

Features of face-to-face vs. online courses

In a face-to-face teaching and learning environment, the major medium is the instructor. Instructors are highly interactive, adaptable, and flexible (Smith & Ragan, 1999). During teaching, the instructor is able to read learners’ minds from their facial expressions. When the instructor notices learners’ confused looks or frustrations, he/she can clarify the parts that are confusing learners and provide encouragement to help learners get rid of their frustrations. Also, when a chapter is not easy to understand, students can always ask questions in class and get immediate answers from the instructor. If project guidelines are not sufficiently clear to learners, the instructor can always use the media available in the classroom, for example, drawing illustrations on the board, to clarify the requirements and project expectations. Different groupings can be used for different class activities. In support of these teaching and learning activities, instructor use of interactive small groups can be especially effective.

On the other hand, in the online course learning environment learners feel less pressure and can learn at their own pace, but they are not able to get prompt answers to their questions in an asynchronous learning environment. There are several classroom events that lead to increased frustration in an on-line course, including 1) The instructor’s assumptions about learner knowledge (learners are at varied levels of understanding instruction); 2) Reading a difficult chapter without immediate help from the instructor; and 3) Insufficiently clear project guidelines without the instructor’s explanations. These few ideas simply initiate thinking about the various difficulties that exist in an on-line course between the instructor and the student. For this paper, we decided to use our experiences teaching an on-line graduate-level Instructional Design Course to explore these issues.

An online course in Instructional Design

The class that has served as a pilot study for our exploration into effective strategies is an online course in Instructional Design taken by thirteen students at Indiana State University during the 2004 spring semester. Although the students came into the course with varying levels of prior experience in online instruction, they all successfully completed the course. They were surveyed at the beginning and at the end of the course. The results of those surveys are discussed in the remainder of the paper.

Students’ prior experiences with online course instructional strategies

According to a survey given at the beginning of the course, the instructional strategies that students were able to notice in the online courses that they had taken were not different from the traditional face-to-face courses. There were seven Ph.D. and six Master’s students in this online course. Three students had never taken an online course before. Four students had taken an online course using WebCT and nine using Blackboard CourseInfo (some students were familiar with both WebCT and Blackboard CourseInfo). The instructional strategies that the students (n = 10) noticed in the online courses that they had taken are reported in Table 1.

Table 1. Frequency of instructional strategies used in the online courses

Strategies	Example	Imagery	Concept mapping	Frames	Advanced organizer	Analogy	Chunking
Frequency	10	3	1	3	2	2	3

Other instructional strategies were not mentioned by the students. This paper builds on the survey results by analyzing instructional strategies beyond the traditional strategies in a face-to-face learning environment. We believe these strategies support effective teaching and learning for an online project-based course.

Strategies used in this course

The instructional strategies that we discuss in the paper were employed in this online course and include: pre-instruction, project examples, professional critique, self-evaluation rubrics, project pre-review, and teaming-up activities. The following are descriptions of these six instructional strategies:

Strategy 1 Pre-Instruction: Pre-instruction is defined as instruction that helps students quickly become comfortable with the online course environment, so that they can focus their energies on the class itself. Students were given instruction in the use of the WebCT site, in a “How To” document that outlined the mechanics of the WebCT environment as it was used for this course. Besides general navigation instructions, topics covered included how to design a personal website, participate in a discussion, use WebCT email, submit projects, and check grades. To be sure that the students had assimilated all of the material, they were required to complete two quizzes covering the material. Neither quiz was accepted until it was 100% correct.

Strategy 2 Project Examples: According to Carr-Chellman and Duchastel (2001), “One potentially very useful element for students in the accomplishment of their learning tasks is the availability of prior students’ work online.” The project examples we used are three complete sets of well-done projects by three students who took the same course with the same instructor in a face-to-face learning environment in a previous semester. In the absence of live classroom instruction, students were able to study the results of previous students’ work in the class to better understand the project requirements. Questions about the examples could be raised during the course discussions.

Strategy 3 Professional Critique: Professional critique is defined as evaluations of one of the example projects, including both the elements with which students agree and the elements with which students disagree. For each of the ten projects in this course, the student was required to do a professional critique of one of the three example projects. Rationales for the critique had to be provided. The professional critique required students to study the example at a deeper level and think critically about what it is that makes a project good or makes it flawed.

Strategy 4 Self-Evaluation Rubrics: The self-evaluation rubric is a tool for students to monitor their own work. It is composed of three sections as shown in Figure 1, including 1) directions of what they need to do, how their self-evaluation scores would be calculated, and how their self-evaluation would be evaluated; 2) a list of the sections that had to be included in the project, highest possible points for each section, a column for students to enter self-evaluation points, and a calculated self-evaluation score for the project; and 3) criteria for self-evaluation on a 5-point scale (Lai et al., 2004). Through using self-evaluation rubrics, students are expected to better understand the requirements for the projects and be able to complete projects that meet the course expectations. A poor self-evaluation score is an indicator to the student that the project guidelines are not adequately met, and further work is needed in order to produce a good project.

Project I (formative evaluation) Evaluation
Name:			_____________________
Date:			_____________________
Direction: This is the self-evaluation sheet for your project I. Based on the evaluation criteria provided, self-evaluate your project. Enter points in the Self-Evaluation Points column for each section and hit the Tab key on your keyboard to move your cursor from one cell to another. Your score is converted based on the formula [(your total self-evaluation points/highest total possible points) * project I points {35}] and it will show in the highlighted cell. Your project evaluation will be graded based on how accurately you self-evaluated your project.
Sections of the Project		Highest Possible Points	Self-Evaluation Points	Your Score
1. Plan and procedure of formative evaluation		5
2. Attributes of target audience vs. try-out learners		5
3. Information about individual try-out learners		5
4. Questionnaire and the response from each try-out learner		5
5. Distribution of scores on both pre- and post- assessments		5
6. Analysis of the data collected		5
7. Revision of the instruction		5
8. Summary		5
Total:		40	0	0.00
Points	Evaluation Criteria
5:	You provided sufficient details for this section and included all the key elements. Your description/narrative was succinct and information was accurate.
4:	In between 5 and 3.
3:	You provided sufficient details for this section and included all the key elements but your description/narrative was not succinct and information was not quite accurate; or you failed to provide sufficient details for this section and not all the key elements were included although your description/narrative was succinct and information was accurate.
2:	In between 3 and 1.
1:	You failed to provide sufficient details and your description/narrative was neither succinct nor accurate.
0:	Your project did not include this section.

Figure 1. An example of a self-evaluation rubric.

Strategy 5 Project Pre-Review: Project pre-review is an activity for students to submit projects before the due date for a preliminary review to see if they were “on the right track”. This instructional strategy had the value of helping those who misinterpreted the instructions and were not creating the right product. In the absence of regular class meetings and office hours, pre-review provided a valuable opportunity for feedback for the students. Many authors of works about on-line education also stress the importance of timely feedback, among them Carr-Chellman & Duchastel (2001); Corgan, Hammer, Margolies, & Crossley (2004); and Johnson & Aragon(2003).

Strategy 6 Teaming-Up Activities: Two types of teaming-up activities were employed in this class. First, discussions were held jointly with another Instructional Design class at another university, so that students could share ideas and learn from each other. The student seemed to really enjoy interacting with the other students, as evidence by their friendly interaction, and there was a lot of sharing of ideas between the two groups. Second, graduate students who had completed the course earlier, and who were enrolled in an Advanced Instructional Design class, led some of the discussions and answered questions regarding the projects. These experienced students could relate well to their peers in the class, and the arrangement was enriching for all involved.

End-of-course survey

At the end of the course, a survey instrument was used to assess the relative effectiveness of the different strategies outlined above. The survey contained the following questions:

1. Please check one box for each instructional strategy listed in the following table, where 5 stands for very effective and 1 for not effective at all:

Instructional Strategy	5	4	3	2	1
Pre-instruction
Project Examples
Professional Critique
Self-Evaluation Rubrics
Project Pre-view
Teaming-up Activities

2. Please explain why you check the strategies as effective or not effective:

Pre-instruction:

Project Examples:

Professional Critique:

Self-Evaluation Rubrics:

Project Pre-view:

Teaming-up Activities:

3. Which strategy do you think is the most helpful? Please put the strategies in the order from most helpful to least helpful by numbering them using 1 to 6, where 1 stands for most helpful (1^st place) and 6 for least helpful (6^th place).

__ Pre-instruction __ Self-Evaluation Rubrics

__ Project Examples __ Project Pre-view

__ Professional Critique __ Teaming-up Activities

Survey Results

While the overwhelming frontrunner for both effectiveness and helpfulness was Project Examples, all of the instructional strategies were considered fairly effective, with the average score ranging from 3.7 to 4.8. The results are shown in table 2.

Table 2. Student responses regarding effectiveness of instructional strategies

Strategy	Number of votes by effectiveness rating						Mean
	5	4	3	2	1	n/a
Pre-instruction	4	7	2	0	0	0	4.2
Project Examples	10	3	0	0	0	0	4.8
Professional Critique	3	6	3	1	0	0	3.8
Self-Evaluation Rubrics	2	6	4	1	0	0	3.7
Project Pre-Review	5	4	3	0	0	1	4.2
Teaming-up Activities	4	6	3	0	0	0	4.1

Summary of effectiveness results

Strategy 1 Pre-Instruction: Students felt comfortable in their understanding of the requirements and expectations of the course.

Strategy 2 Project Examples: Students greatly appreciated having examples of completed projects to guide them in their design. A typical comment was “When I wasn’t 100% sure what needed to be done based on the instruction alone, the examples answered my questions.” Students also liked having examples that showed instruction designed for a variety of subject areas.

Strategy 3 Professional Critique: Although this strategy was considered effective, it received mixed reviews. Some students appreciated the opportunity to analyze a sample project in depth, while others felt that they were hunting for something to disagree with just to complete the assignment. The critiques themselves varied from two-sentence submissions to lengthy discussions. The authors suspect that the perceived effectiveness might be related to the amount of depth of analysis that the student performed. This bears further exploration.

Strategy 4 Self-Evaluation Rubrics: This was another strategy that received mixed reviews. Students appreciated having a detailed rubric against which to evaluate their projects, but many were uncomfortable with the idea of self-evaluation and uneasy about how it would be viewed by the instructor. Perhaps the rubric should be provided for private self-evaluation, with students not required to submit the results for grading.

Strategy 5 Project Pre-Review: This was a popular strategy with a number of students. Several students who submitted projects for pre-review had been far off-track in their design. The small amount of time that it took to do the pre-review and provide feedback saved a lot of time for the student, and for the instructor, too, in the long run. The student avoided the frustration and time lost in reworking the design, necessary since the projects all built on one another. The instructor saved time by being able to grade a project that was done correctly, rather than one that was flawed and required a lot of detailed suggestions for redesign.

Strategy 6 Teaming-Up Activities: Students enjoyed sharing ideas among themselves and with their peers from another university. They also liked having the former students lead some of the discussions. They found it helpful to be able to ask questions about the projects that they were designing, and to receive timely feedback which included helpful suggestions and ideas.

Summary of ranking results

This part of the survey asked students to rank the strategies in the order of helpfulness to them in the course (where 1 is the most helpful, 6 is the least helpful). The results are summarized in table 3.

Table 3. Student responses regarding ranking of strategies in order of helpfulness

Strategy	Number of votes - rank order of effectiveness						Rank of Helpfulness
	1*	2	3	4	5	6
Pre-instruction	2	2	5	2	1	1	2
Project Examples	11	2	0	0	0	0	1
Professional Critique	0	2	2	2	2	5	5
Self-Evaluation Rubrics	0	1	1	2	6	3	6
Project Pre-Review	1	2	3	5	0	2	3
Teaming-up Activities	0	3	2	2	4	2	4

* One student had two first choices

As was mentioned before, the favorite strategy by far was Project Examples, with eleven students ranking it as number one and the remaining two students ranking it as number 2. Next in popularity were the Pre-Instruction and Project Pre-Review. Slightly below those was Teaming-up Activities. The least favorite were Professional Critique and Self-Evaluation Rubrics which, as mentioned before, received mixed reviews. It should be noted, however, that all six strategies were considered effective for the online instruction, and so all have merit.

Future research

The strategies used in this study will continue to be used in subsequent offerings of the online Instructional Design course, and will undergo further study, evaluation, and refinement. The authors welcome others to try these methods in online courses in this and in other disciplines. The field of online instruction is still young, and there is much exploration yet to be done in the development of effective instruction.

References

Carr-Chellman, A., & Duchastel, P. (2001). The ideal online course, Library Trends, 50(1), 145-158.

Corgan, R., Hammer, V., Morgolies, M., & Crossley, C. (2004). Making your online course successful, Business Education Forum, 58(3), 51.

Johnson, S., & Aragon, S. (2003). An instructional strategy framework for online learning environments, New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 100, 31-43.

Lai, Y-F., Tantrarungroj, P., & Lai, F-Q. (2004). Integration of technology: Design a dynamic electronic rubric for online courses, Paper presented at the 2004 Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education conference.

Smith, P. L., & Ragan, T. J. (1999). Instructional design. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.