What are the differences between Basic Principles and Best practices? As I looked into these two topics as independent subject categories, I discovered that the two tend to blur together. Today's best practices are tomorrows basic principles. Teaching online is new to most educators. The short history of online instruction is marked by pioneers who have tried a little of this with a little of that, a sort of trial by fire, if you will.

What follows are various opinions expressed in three articles on what are the best practices and principles of online education. The following sources are particularly effective in simplifying the issues in regard to successful practices. I have only included excerpts from the articles. If you would like to view the entire article, at the end of each article is a link to the original document. Also included beneath each article is a link to a printer friendly PDF version. 

NOTE: A more extensive selection of links to articles can be found under the Resources link on left-hand menu bar.

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Best Practices and principles of online education from Weber State

Best Practices from University of Maryland study

Why Encourage Student Interaction and Collaboration?

Best Practices and principles of online education from Weber State

Weber State University (WSU) faculty believe that the following 18 points need to be included in any successful Online Course:

1. An online course should be based on the same learning outcomes and demand the same rigor as a traditional class. The identification of courses to be taught online, the semesters in which to offer them, and the assignment of instructors rest with the academic department.

2. Students should spend the same amount of time on an online course as they do for a campus course. The rule of 15 clock hours of class time per credit hour should guide development of an online course.

3. Online courses should reach the same learning outcomes as traditional courses. Assessment of the effectiveness of online offerings should be conducted at the same time as and in a manner consistent with departmental standards and practice for traditional courses.

4. Online faculty are responsible for identifying copyrighted materials used in their courses and for either citing that material appropriately or obtaining written permission to use it in the web environment in advance of coursework beginning.

5. Discussions, chat, use of media (especially streamed media) should all be chosen to be value-added to the student.

6. Every course should address the needs of students with disabilities; boilerplate language can be provided.

COURSE COMPONENTS

7.  All online courses use the course template (which includes navigation pathways and design standards) developed by the WSU Online team and modified by the experience of WSU Online faculty.

8. Course content should be up-to-date at the beginning of the term, with dates changed from term to term and links updated.

9. Because online courses are unique in being a form of publication, experienced online faculty feel that each course must reflect the highest professional standards, including careful attention to such fundamentals as spelling, grammar, and mechanics.

Comment: Even though access to courses is restricted to enrolled students, posting material to the world wide web is a form of publication that reflects not only on the individual faculty member but also on the institution as a whole. Errors can be magnified and multiplied in the online environment. The standard stated here addresses the instructor’s work. Each instructor may set and should articulate his own standard for the level of editing expected in student work.

If the instructor views web assignments as written work to be graded on mechanics as well as content, that should be clearly stated. If the instructor is more concerned that students make substantive content contributions to an online discussion without worrying about spelling (for instance), that too should be clearly stated.

10. When possible and when supportive of course objectives, the course should draw on and incorporate some of the vast information resources available via the web.

11. Instructors should feel free to use library resources to the same extent for online courses as they do in traditional classes.

12. There should be task submissions for students with substantive feedback on a regular basis, preferably weekly. 

13. Online instructors should set and articulate clear and realistic timelines for responding to students and should adhere to them.

14. Special efforts should be made to create and support a learning community among online students who may feel they are working in isolation.

15. The course should use the richness of the electronic medium to the fullest extent possible. Online faculty should possess skills in word processing and electronic communication at least equivalent to those identified in the computer literacy requirement for students. 

16. Course design should include appropriate orientation about how the course is structured and how online tools work. 

17. The online medium should be used for teaching and learning activities. A syllabus and a set of online tests do not constitute an online course. 

18. Every course should address academic honesty.

December 17, 2000
Weber state article pdf
For more information, the actual article is located at:
http://wsuonline.weber.edu/factraining/unit1/section1/guidelines.htm

#1. Weber State Article Question: 
If you were to rate the top 3 points (out of the 18 points sited in the article), what would they be? Explain why you feel these three points that you selected are very important.

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Best practices from University of Maryland study

This study examines how best practices in online instruction are the same as, or different from, best practices in face-to-face (F2F) instruction. The book Effectiveness and Efficiency in Higher Education for Adults [1] summarizes some 20 years of research on best practices in F2F instruction. The bases of comparison are principles from the KS&G material and from Chickering and Gamson’s “seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education” [2]. A reason for making these comparisons is that the rapid growth of online instruction promises that online instruction may become the largest source of ongoing higher education. Not surprisingly, interest in assessing the quality of online offerings has also grown [3, 4, 5, 6]. The question is increasingly raised: Are postsecondary institutions effectively “doing their old job in a new way?” [7]. One way to answer that question is to analyze the online instructional practices of faculty with the aid of research on patterns of instruction, face-to-face and online. 

I. PRINCIPLES OF BEST PRACTICE

The book Effectiveness and Efficiency in Higher Education for Adults [1] (herein referred to as KS&G) undertakes just such an analysis. The book surveys research of the last 20 years, including meta-analyses of studies on different principles of instruction, in search of principles and practices with largest effect sizes in explaining learning gains. Eight principles emerge as a manageable set of principles meeting this criterion. For each of the principles, case studies are cited that apply each principle as effective practices or strategies.

These eight principles, though worded differently, partially overlap and supplement the “seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education” [2] (herein “C&G”).

Table 1. Principles from C&G and from KS&G

A focus on active learning is shared by the two analyses, with KS&G making explicit the need for critical thinking and including cooperation among students and interaction between teacher and students as ways to foster the active, critical reflection. Finally, KS&G adds a focus on the institutional climate or environmental press for inquiry as a key to best practice.

II. KEY FINDINGS

Key findings of the study to date include the following:

• The individual instructor’s effectiveness in applying the eight principles of KS&G is a major factor in adult students’ learning and persistence.
• Students need support additional to that of the syllabus in understanding and pursuing the learning objectives of a course or other educational effort.
• Students in online courses expect faculty to be more readily and promptly available at non-class times than F2F students expect of faculty in responding to the students’ communications.
• The most effective faculty actively use five or more of the full array of instructional principles so can they elicit the largest learning effects.
• Faculty agreed that teaching well online is more time-consuming than teaching F2F.

February 14, 2002
University of Maryland study pdf
For more information, the actual article is located at:
http://www.sloan-c.org/publications/jaln/v8n2/v8n2_keeton.asp

#2. University of Maryland Study Question: 
Relate an experience you have had with an excellent F2F instructor and respond to these two questions: What made that instructor great? How would that great instructor continue to be great in an online environment?

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Why Encourage Student Interaction and Collaboration?

Online course communication tools enable students to interact with course content, the instructor, and their peers outside of the classroom. Students are given the opportunity to negotiate the meaning of course content through these interactions - creating the potential for a deeper and longer lasting learning.

A virtual learning community that provides support and sharing among its members can be built through the integration of online communication tools and course activities and sustained through effective facilitation by the instructor.

Fundamental principles of constructivism support this view: learning is an active process of constructing rather than acquiring knowledge individuals learn through interaction with their world individuals develop knowledge through social interaction.

Changing Roles in Online Learning Environments

Instructor Role:

Source: Berge, Collins, 1996

Learner Role: towards more collaborative/cooperative interaction with peers

Learner Role:

Source: Berge, Collins, 1996

Certain researchers suggest that a teaching method which encapsulates collaboration and interaction would likely work well within the framework of Internet based distance education courses. In order to verify how interaction and collaboration work between students in distance education courses, we observed and researched two undergraduate university courses offered via the Internet. All communications were text based and in asynchronous mode relying upon e-mail, group discussions and hypertext navigation to facilitate the collaborative work process. This exploratory study has enabled us to identify some problematic elements which can hamper collaboration between distance education students. From these results, we developed recommendations for ensuring the success of collaborative assignments for future Internet courses.

From what we have observed and analyzed, the following recommendations have been compiled in order to ensure optimal conditions for collaboration via the Internet :

• Collaborative tasks should be an integral element of the course design and should be offered at regular intervals. As much as possible, collaborative tasks have to be evaluated on equal par with individual work.
• Distance learners should be encouraged to construct learning together through meaningful collaborative tasks which allow for pertinent interaction. These collaborative tasks must be based upon a constructivist approach rather than a transmission type approach.
• Group composition has to be undertaken with great care by attempting to match personal, professional, cultural and academic backgrounds.
• It is necessary to indicate that collaboration via the Internet did not work well within the parameters of first year courses, which attracts a multitude of students with diverse academic backgrounds. Research has shown that collaboration works well with a professional or graduate course where the level of homogeneity among students is much higher (Muffoletto, 1997).

March 3, 2000
Interaction and Collaboration pdf
For more information, the two actual articles are located at:
http://www.cmu.edu/teaching/technology/bestpractices.html
http://ifets.ieee.org/periodical/vol_3_2000/d11.html

#3. Student Interaction and Collaboration Question: 
As a group in a threaded discussion, discus the following problem: If you were an online instructor, how would you get students to interact and collaborate?

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