REFLECTIONS ON THE DESIGN AND REALIZATION OF

AN ONLINE COURSE

Giuliana Dettori Institute for Educational Technology –National Research Council, Italy

ABSTRACT

Reflecting on the design and development of online learning activities is important to help improve and consolidate good

practices. This paper analyses the issues faced and the solutions adopted in the design and implementation of an

interdisciplinary online course, run within an international Virtual Doctoral School. Reflecting on the lessons learned

from this experience allowed the author to spot a number of aspects where effective solutions were adopted to meet the

context requirements and lead the course to positive outcomes.

KEYWORDS

Online course, collaborative learning, course design, group interaction.

1. INTRODUCTION

Online learning has been around for many years now, and many books and papers on this topic have been

published, both to discuss from a theoretical point of view what is important to care for when designing and

running online courses, or to present the outcomes of a variety of such activities, with different aims,

structures and contexts (Koschmann, et al., 2002; Dillenbourg et al., 2008). Nevertheless, reflecting on the

realization of such activities is still necessary, because there are many degrees of freedom in the design and

management of online courses, and success can never be taken for granted.

Theoretical studies have spotted several important aspects. A first tenet is the opportunity to base courses

on collaborative activities, in order not only to overcome the uneasiness that students feel for not having a

physical reference point (Christiansen, 2006) or because the lack of non-verbal cues may impoverish

communication (Garrison et al., 2000) but also to exploit the potential benefits for learning of dialogue and

collaboration (Forret et al., 2006). It is also crucial to structure learners’ interactions, because simply putting

learners together to perform a task may not be sufficient to achieve learning (Barkley et al., 2005); moreover,

just stimulating students to talk with each other is not enough, since it is not the quantity of interaction that

matters, but its quality in relation with the task at hand (Garrison & Cleveland-Innes, 2005). Moreover, a

social presence needs to be established, since this influences learning as much as cognitive and teaching

presence (Garrison et al., 2000; Rovai, 2007). The learning context and environment is also worth attention

as concerns both the choice of a platform and its configuration.

In the literature on practical applications, it is possible to find the description of many realizations, often

widely dissimilar from each other in the pedagogical design and not always effective in exploiting

technology at best to attain the expected educational outcomes. Hence, analyzing the lessons learned from

practical experiences is still necessary to advance the field, because it helps to widen and consolidate a

shared base of practical knowledge apt to improve the quality of online education as well as to encourage and

support its diffusion. Contributing in this respect is the aim of this paper.

The next section presents an online course that was run, in recent years, within an international Virtual

Doctoral School, in the context of the European NoE Kaleidoscope. Being open to students of many

universities across Europe, the course was run completely online and asynchronously, for practical reasons,

i.e., to avoid travel expenses and to fit in possibly very different schedules of people attending various

courses of studies in different places. Relying only on written interaction, moreover, could facilitate

understanding of students who were not English native speakers. This “asynchronous, online” choice

obviously entailed the need to find a solution to some problems, such as providing classes in a live way,

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answering questions on the theoretical introduction to the benefit of all, and giving the students some

practical knowledge of the topic while providing the opportunity for meaningful collaborative work. The next

section explains the design choices made, the reasons behind them and the adjustments that were necessary

during the course development. A discussion of the outcomes and a reflection on the lesson learned

concludes the paper.

2. COURSE ORGANIZATION

This 2-month, 5-credit online course, addressed to PhD students with any background, was based on

constructivist collaborative learning, enriched with some phases of individual study and reflection. The topic

tackled was Narrative Learning Environments (NLEs), that is, learning environments which exploit the

educational potential of narrative by engaging the learner in technology-mediated activity where stories or

narrations related to the learning task play a central role (Dettori & Paiva, 2009). The course was mainly

designed and run by the author of this paper, with some help by a number of project members from different

institutions, who collaborated as experts or tutors. All interactions took place in English, which was a second

language for most people involved.

2.1 Context

Eighteen PhD students from six different universities across Europe applied to take part in the course. Three

applicants abandoned the course at a very early stage and two left it half way through. The remaining 13

participants, on the other hand, satisfactorily completed the whole course.

The participants’ studies ranged across several topics: CSCL and CMC; Educational Technology; e-

learning; ICT in education and teacher training; student modelling and didactical strategies; literature;

philosophy of science; digital culture. They had different levels of previous knowledge as concerns the

participation in online courses. Most had excellent or good previous experience; two had an average

experience. Only two students respectively had very limited experience or not at all. The participants also

had different degrees of previous knowledge on the course topic. No students had excellent knowledge, just

two had respectively good and average knowledge, most had very limited knowledge or none.

The platform on which the activities were carried out allowed the creation of discussion forums and

working spaces where participants could post messages and files. No synchronous communication was

allowed. Posting of news and learning materials was also possible. The platform had a clear and simple

interface, but did not offer some features which turn extremely handy in the realization of online activities,

like a history showing who has read a message or downloaded a file and a personalized indication that new

materials or messages have been posted. The course learning environment was created by configuring the

platform as follows:

• posting news in the opening page, so as they could be immediately available at log in;

• providing a calendar with a detailed description of the course phases and their deadline, so as to

stimulate and support students’ individual planning of their learning activity, with the aim to foster

students’ self-regulation;

• a number of learning materials, added at different moments during the course, so as to repeatedly raise

students’ attention;

• a list of suggested extra-readings, to help the students individually deepen the topic in various possible

directions, according to their interests and learning needs;

• a free discussion space (Course café) to give the students a possibility to interact on out-of-topic matters

without disturbing the flow of course-related discussion, as suggested by several authors;

• individual work spaces for all the groups formed during the course development;

• dedicated discussion forums for the introductory and concluding modules (as explained in the section

below);

• a list of the participants with pictures, with the aim to support social presence.

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2.2 Learning Aims and Plan

The course was structured to include 3 phases respectively aiming to introduce the topic of NLEs, to guide

the students to analyse them, and to foster reflection on the learning achieved. These three phases were

articulated into 5 Modules, as summarized in Table 1 and described below.

Table 1. Summary of the course modules

Activities Tasks

Module I: Introductory phase; estimated workload: 8 and a half hours Preparation activities (week 1) Acquire familiarity with the platform and group

Lectures (week 2):

- "A concise introduction to NLEs” (20 min.)

- "Narrative authoring tools" (10 min.)

- "Interactive NLEs" (15 min.)

- "Design of an NLEs based on reflective narration"

(15 min.)

- "Evaluating NLEs’ educational impact " (10 min.)

A forum remains active for the whole week (Discussion area), to

ask questions and share comments on the lectures. Several

experts take part in it.

Participation in this forum is recommended.

Module II - Guided analysis on NLEs; estimated workload: 10 hours (weeks 3-4)

Individual reading of bibliographical materials.

Group work on NLEs: each group will be assigned a

kind of NLEs to analyze

Each student explores one type of NLEs by analysing some

papers and demos. The use of group workspace is required.

Group members jointly spot and discuss the main features of the

considered NLEs and writes a concise summary.

Module III - Autonomous analysis of NLEs; estimated workload: 10 hours (weeks 5-6)

Jigsaw Group work.

New groups are formed by mixing participants of

different groups in Module II.

Each group analyzes NLEs of 3 different kinds, works out ideas

for application and improvement and writes a short collaborative

report on the activity carried out. Questions helping to structure

the reports are provided. The use of group workspace is required.

Module IV - Shared reflection; estimated workload: 6 and a half hours (week 7)

Whole class discussion about the reports produced in

Module III

Each students reads the reports of all groups and participates

actively the forum discussion.

Module V - Individual reflection; estimated workload: 5 hours (week 8)

Individual reflection Individual reflection and preparation of a written report

summarizing individually what they had learned in the course.

Introductory phase (Module I, duration: 2 weeks). The first week was devoted to getting familiar with the

platform and group. Then an introductory text was provided, together with five lectures, by several experts

from different countries, with different specializations and perspectives on the subject, who presented the

state of the art and relevant issues in the field. The lectures were offered as recorded talks (video and audio)

synchronized with the slide presentation and in a format readable by any browser with Flash plug-ins. This

choice aimed to support teaching and social presence and encourage participation by making the theoretical

introduction easily manageable and alive as if the students were actually taking part in a class, yet allowing

everybody to use them at his/her own pace. In order to allow students to ask questions on this theoretical

introduction in a shared context, a dedicated discussion forum remained open for the whole week, and the

lecturers were encouraged to comment not only on questions related to their presentations, but also to add

comments on any other points, so as to let the students gain a multi-perspective view on the topic.

Analysis phase (Modules II and III, duration: 2 weeks each). This phase aimed to give the students some

practical knowledge of NLEs, which entailed trying to use some of them. This was complex to organize at a

distance, because it was not possible to distribute copies of software to all students. Hence, it was decided to

make the students work on demos, since several rich demos were available online.

In Module II the students were divided into 6 groups of 3 people, each of which was assisted by two

tutors with different kinds of competence. The high number of tutors involved aimed to decrease tutor’s

workload and at the same time let the students experience different tutoring styles. Each group was assigned

to analyse the demo of one type of NLE (NLEs based on narrative editors and 2 different kinds of interactive

NLEs), together with two related papers to read and a set of questions to call attention on the most relevant

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aspects. Each group was asked to prepare a joint report, highlighting the main features of the type of NLEs

analysed, as well as its strengths and weaknesses. The tutors provided feedback on these reports.

In Module III, a Jigsaw (Barkley et al., 2005) group work was organized, that is, new groups were formed

involving people who had worked on different kinds of NLEs in Module II, with the aim to lead participants

to share the competence acquired. Three groups were made by mixing the members of Module II groups. The

demos of the three different NLEs were given to each group, together with a new set of questions to guide

reflection on the applicability of those NLEs. Each group was asked to prepare a comparative report on the 3

environments analysed. All reports were posted on the platform and constituted the starting point for a shared

reflection carried out in the next phase.

Reflection phase (Modules IV and V). Module IV was a collective discussion on the nature and possible

applications of the NLE types analysed, starting from a comparison of the reports worked out. This aimed to

spot points where some more understanding or deepening was necessary. A dedicated online forum remained

active for a whole week. Module V, finally, consisted in an individual reflection on the work done. A short

report was requested from each student, summarizing what they had learned, reflecting on the role of

technology and proposing possible applications of the acquired knowledge in their own course of studies.

At the end, the students were requested to fill in an end-of-course questionnaire on their appreciation of

the experience, including 25 closed questions to be answered on a scale 1 to 5, as well as 8 open questions.

These questionnaires, together with the reports produced and the discussion carried out in the forums and

workspaces constituted the data for qualitative analysis of this experience.

2.3 Problems encountered while running the Course

The course was run twice, with few organizational differences and similar outcomes. This paper is focused

on the first edition; the second edition is mentioned only when some variation in the setting and organization

was applied, with different outcomes.

The initial week of familiarization turned out rather useless, not only because the working space was easy

to use and most of the students had previous experience with online activities, but also because participants’

curiosity for each other was mostly limited to the learning sphere, so that their questions and comments could

well find a proper space within the course discussion areas. Comparing this experience with other personal

experiences of online tutoring, I think that the need for a free interaction space may be felt more when the

students share something outside the course (e.g., participation in a same school or other courses). Social

presence does not really require a “virtual café” to be stated, but may well be established while working, by

creating a context where students can express opinions and feelings in relation with the course and subject,

especially since it appears from the literature, as pointed out in the introduction, that social interaction and

presence may create the conditions for sharing and challenging ideas but may fail to create cognitive

presence, which is what makes learning happen, if they are unrelated with the cognitive task at hand.

The group functioning with the jigsaw organization did not turn out as expected. The main reason was

that, even though in Module II the students had become familiar with just one (out of three) type of NLEs,

and hence they really had different knowledge at the beginning of the module, they had acquired the same

method of analysis, hence in Module III they did not need much to relay on colleagues’ expertise to analyse

the new types of environment. Remarking this problem while evaluating the course outcomes, I decided to

eliminate the jigsaw in the next edition, which implied a different organization of both Module II and Module

III, to give all students some basic knowledge on all kinds of NLEs. The same group composition was kept in

these two modules, so as to let the students take advantage of the acquaintance and collaboration dynamics

established. The outcomes, however, were less satisfactory than in the previous course. Even if Module II

was a guided analysis while Module III consisted in an autonomous evaluation of some environments, the

students did not perceive a clear separation between the modules, supported by the fact that the group

composition was the same. This led them to pay less attention in the preparation of both modules’ reports.

A point in the course development which required particular care was the conduction of the final

discussion with the whole class. The task in this case was to compare the reports on NLEs prepared by the

three groups in Module III, pointing out differences in understanding, so as to spot and discuss areas where

corrections or deepening were necessary. The days passed but nobody showed up in the discussion forum.

Hence I started preparing messages highlighting one issue at a time and asking some specific questions, on

which it was not difficult to express an opinion. I posted one of them every half a day, so as to repeatedly call

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students’ attention. It worked. After a couple of posts, individual comments started to arrive, and the

discussion that took off from this start was rich, animated and fruitful. The same problem took place the next

year. In this case the start was even more difficult, since there were no evident discrepancies among the

reports of the three groups. Hence I decided to summarize on the most relevant aspects of the subject, one at

a time, asking simple questions about personal experiences, opinions, or ideas for applications, and started

posting one every half a day. The reaction this time was slower, but when comments started to arrive the

discussion became once again alive, interesting and rewarding.

2.4 Outcomes and Appreciation of the Experience

Even though not everything run exactly as planned, the course resulted very satisfactory: the discussion

spaces witnessed students’ involvement, the reports produced showed a good amount of learning, and the

answers to the questionnaire expressed a high level of satisfaction of both the acquired knowledge and the

learning experience. All components of the course (lectures, readings, forums, group activities and individual

reflection) were appreciated as contributing to the learning achieved. The lectures, in particular, were deemed

very effective because of the format including easy-to-watch video with audio and slides synchronized.

The course setting and organization was also appreciated. Quoting students’ comments: “The

organization was very good, and helped me to follow the activities”. “I always have trouble organizing my

time. This course setting offered me an organizing scheme, so I had no problem dealing with the work”.

The students acknowledged learning and deemed the course useful, independently of their field of study;

this suggests that a good balance between theoretical and applicative aspects was reached, so as to meet to a

good extent the needs of a group of people with a variety of disciplinary interests: “I was able to give some

order to my scattered notions”. “I found this experience particularly interesting and stimulating; all in all, I

am satisfied with the overview I got on the topic”. “A well designed course, high profile expertise, an

experience I would recommend to any PhD student in the field of educational technology”.

The learning experience was appreciated not only as concerns content knowledge on NLEs, but also as a

good practice as concerns online and collaborative learning: “It has been to me an opportunity to study and

interact with other researchers and I really appreciate it”. “It has been very valuable for me, not only

about NLEs but also learning about participation in online modules.” “Building knowledge through this

form of collaboration is a very rewarding process”. “A valuable experience has been the asynchronous

collaboration and discussion. I found the discussion extremely interesting and warm”.

Interacting with unknown people resulted difficult to someone (“It was difficult ... simply because one

had to get understood very fast by people never met before”) but not to others (“For me it was a useful

experience; it convinced me that I can collaborate with people I don’t know in person”).

Working with students from other countries was mostly appreciated by the participants, who found it

useful and meaningful: “It is quite natural that in these times and with the technologies we currently have,

distance work is organized among students from different parts of the continent”. “Students from different

areas often have different backgrounds and abilities, which they usefully share with the others”.

Most students appreciated the fact to work in an interdisciplinary environment, that is, with people with

different interests and background: “Working with people with other backgrounds and countries in this way

was fun and new to me”. “Collaborating with people with different background and interests gave me the

possibility to widen my vision of the study”.

3. CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS

Reflecting back on this experience, several elements appear to have been crucial for its success and worth

being replicated in other occasions and contexts, especially since they were not organizationally onerous:

1. The organization of the theoretical introduction in Module I. The recorded classes gave the students the

impression that it was indeed a collective learning activity and prepared the ground for the need of

collaboration in the next modules. The week-long forum for questions on the theoretical introduction

allowed the students to ask after pondered reflection, which in the end resulted more useful than the

short-term possibility to ask questions in face-to-face classes, yet preserving the potential for collective

learning of public questions and answers.

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2. The organization of student collaboration. The kind of content knowledge that was the focus of this

course did not allow a completely satisfactory jigsaw organization, as explained above. However,

comparing the two editions of the course, I think that an imperfect jigsaw, as was set up in the first

edition, is anyway more stimulating and fruitful than a plain collaborative task on case studies, because

changing group mates brings a greater variety of points of view and approaches, with consequent deeper

insight and better learning. 3. The way to handle the final discussion, by regularly and repeatedly posting messages on single topics,

which appeared to effectively stimulate individual contributions, besides providing a structure for

discussion threading.

4. The presence of multiple voices, i.e., several experts addressing different aspects of the considered

subject, and tutors with different orientations. This led to establish a solid but varied ground on which

knowledge could be built. Providing short classes from different lecturers, moreover, allowed the

theoretical introduction to be parcelled, making it very manageable for the students to use.

5. The choice of a completely asynchronous setting. This appears essential in a compound and varied

situation like this interdisciplinary and international course, in that it helps to meet the organizational

needs of many people working and living in different environments. This avoids that anybody may feel

to have missed anything relevant, since everything is always available online, and nothing else is taking

place in the course. Moreover, the need to clearly put one’s thought in written form even during the

discussion phase fosters reflection and this is useful not only to improve learning outcomes, but also to

develop learning skills.

6. The clear and straightforward organization of the online space; students should never need to wander

around opening many folders/pages in order to find what is going on and what they have to do.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The author wishes to thank the experts and tutors involved: Tania Giannetti, Bregje de Vries, Ana Vaz, Ana

Paiva, Jeffrey Earp, Françoise Decortis and Hans van der Meij; Kaleidoscope’s Virtual Doctoral School,

which provided the context and stimulus for this experience; and the PhD students who contributed with their

commitment to its success.

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