Beauty and the Beast: Learning from a comparison of two online courses
Session Abstract
This session describes two online courses in an adult education masters program. One received high student evaluations and the other low. It will provide insight on strategies that seem to boost student satisfaction, engagement, and learning based on comparative analysis of activities, assignments, formats and instructor behaviors.
Target Audience
Online instructors and course designers
Session Description
The research on online learning is rapidly expanding. In general, it focuses on engagement and learning in specific content areas and disciplines and the relationships between various student populations and instructional strategies and tools. This work is conducted either through study of one particular course or course activity or through comparisons of synchronous to asynchronous and face to face, blended, and online learning opportunities or different approaches to typical instructional activities (e.g., discussion). Although best practices are emerging, this comparative case study aims to enrich our understanding of effectiveness by contrasting two courses in the same online adult education masters program which students took during the same semester, one that was very well evaluated by students, the other was evaluated poorly. This research context provides a unique opportunity to compare and contrast course activities and assignments, instructional formats, and instructor engagement. They will be analyzed to develop descriptive cases and derive lessons learned about effective online instructional practice. By comparing and contrasting successful and unsuccessful examples of online teaching, we can enrich our understandings of effective strategies to increase student engagement, satisfaction, and learning.