Doing Instructional Design for Distance Education: An Analysis of Design and Technological Issues in Online Course Management Free

With the rapid development of technology, online instruction has emerged as an alternative mode of teaching and learning and a substantial supplement to traditional teaching (Waits & Lewis, 2008). Edwards and Fritz (1997) determined that the effectiveness of online learning is influenced by student access to material, recommending that online information may replace the traditional text format for those students who accept and learn well from the online format.

Coyner and McCann (2009) encouraged online course instructors to prepare, plan, and complete course information and materials before the start of a semester. Organization of content to adjust to the online learning environment is not an easy task, and instructors need to be extremely organized, dedicated, and committed (Reeves & Brown, 2012). As Almeda and Rose (2006) observed, even though many students who take online courses regard themselves as independent learners and would prefer to work individually, students’ reliance on the instructor is more intense in web-based courses than in the traditional classroom.

Davison (2008) contended that one aspect that online teachers may also struggle with is lack of technical support and/or resources to design appropriate materials. According to Davison, teachers and students are recommended to acquire adequate technical skills before they enter the online environment. As Coyner and McCann (2009) observed, to prepare students who are unfamiliar with the technology, teachers may find themselves spending more time in technological training than teaching the content material of the course.

Moore (2013) discussed three important factors in online course design. The first one, proposed is dialogue. Dialogue describes the extent to which, in any educational program, learner and educator are able to respond to each other. This is determined by the content or subject matter which is studied, by the educational philosophy of the educator, by the personalities of educator and learner, and by environmental factors, the most important of which is the medium of communication. The second factor, according to Moore, is structure which is a measure of an educational program’s responsiveness to learner’s individual needs. It expresses the extent to which educational objectives, teaching strategies and evaluation methods are prepared for, or can be adapted to the objectives, strategies, and evaluation methods of the learner. According to Moore (2013), in a highly structured educational program, the objectives and the methods to be used are determined for the learner and are inflexible. The third factor discussed by Moore (2013) is autonomy, which refers to the extent to which learners decide on certain factors such as “what to learn, how to learn, and how much to learn.

This study put emphasis on managing an online course as it runs over the course of a semester in a learning management system. The study focused on how faculty deal with instructional design and technological issues that occur as a course runs asynchronously online wand that would negatively impact student learning.

According to Simonson (2017), “one of the first decisions that online designers must make regards time: Individualized or personalized instruction holds learning outcomes constant an allows for variations in time” (p. 27). Simonson (2017) argued that because most often distance education is time bound, once the time issue is resolved, the structure of the learning experience is decided. Smaldino (1999) reiterated that the planning and organization for a distance education course is multi-faceted and must occur well in advance of the scheduled instruction. In order to eliminate trial-and-error preparation, Smaldino (1999) recommended that courses previously taught in traditional classrooms need to be repurposed with the focus of the instruction shifting to more visual presentations, engaged learners, and careful timing of presentations of information. Savenye and Hong (2017) argued that when designing instruction for online learning, how to sequence instruction may seem to be a deceptively simple step. However, they observed, sequencing instruction for effective student learning involves a very important set of decisions that are made at several levels and stages of design. It is best to design online learning materials using a systematic approach overall. As Branch (2009) observed, while there are numerous models for designing instruction, ADDIE aids designers by suggesting five major steps to designing learning materials: Analyze, design, develop, implement and evaluate. Again, Simonson (2017) contended that online course design and delivery must be instructional technology-based (Dick, Carey, & Carey, 2015). Simonson (2017) further argued that the types of communication technology and instructional technology to be used, grow out of a critical set of decisions that are made early in design process.

Regarding communication, Orellana, Hudgins, and Simonson (2009) argued that early on, the designer makes decisions about how communication between the instructor and students in an online course should occur and whether this communication should be asynchronous of synchronous. According to Simonson, Smaldino and Zvacek (2015), the evidence available about making these decisions does support the trend that novice distance educators design their courses with considerable live communication, while more experienced distance educators opt for asynchronous communication (Simonson et al., 2015). It is arguable that asynchronous communication works better considering that most online learners are normally busy with work and other commitments and mostly prefer responding to communication from their instructor at their own convenient time.

Dick et al. (2015) emphasized that online course design and delivery must be instructional technology based. Dick et al. explained that the types of communication and instructional technology to be used, grow out of a critical set of decisions that are made early in design process. Coyner and McCann (2009) observed that the explosion of technology has also made teaching outside the traditional classroom possible for teachers and has also provided learners with easy access to course material. However, Clark (2012) had warned that media do not directly influence achievement. Nevertheless, Clark went on to elaborate that it is also a basic assumption that, without employing some medium of communication, it is nearly impossible to communicate at a distance. To that and, Clark (2012) contended that designers may make assumptions related to visual and verbal literacy of all learners involved in distance education.

On the technical side of it, Ko and Rossen (2017) stated that an online instructor needs little to start with. A very basic familiarity with computers and the Internet will normally suffice. According to Ko and Rossen, it is sufficient to know how to do the following: Set up folders and directories on a hard drive, use word processing software properly, handle email communications including attachments, and use a browser to access the World Wide Web. However, Ko and Rossen (2017) clearly caution that technological proficiency does not necessarily make the best online instructors; pedagogy should always come first and technology second.

In essence, thorough preparation of a course with due consideration of the intended learners and the medium of delivery is needed for successfully teaching an online course. Interestingly, while it is clear that significant upfront planning and organization are vital when teaching an online course, issues normally continue to occur when well-developed courses are delivered online. These issues affect online learners and instructors and it normally takes assistance from a designated instructional designer and technologist to allay course-impeding design and technical issues when they occur in a learning management system environment.

The study analyzed instructional design and technological issues that impacted the implementation of 120 courses that were created by online faculty members. The courses were evaluated and approved using a university set rubric for evaluating online courses. As the 120 courses were taught, various issues arose and some teachers sought the assistance of a designated instructional designer who worked with them to resolve the issues. These instructional design and technological issues came in various types and affected the various components of an online course Canvas learning management system. Specifically, the study sought to answer the following research questions:

• What instructional design and technological issues did faculty members encounter while teaching 120 online courses in a learning management system environment?

• How were arising instructional design and technological issues resolved while the 120 courses ran online?

• What implications did the whole process of resolving these design and technological issues have on future online course management?

To assure quality in online learning, a state university in the Southwest developed a rubric for evaluating online and blended courses before they would be approved to go live in a learning management system. The Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning was charged with the development of the rubric and using it to evaluate online, blended, webinar and self-paced courses to make sure that they were designed and developed to the level of quality required by the University. This level of quality would also have to satisfy requirements for membership to State Authorization Reciprocity Agreements. A State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement is an agreement among member states, districts, and territories in the United States that establishes comparable national standards for interstate offering of postsecondary distance education courses and programs. It is intended to make it easier for students to take online courses offered by postsecondary institutions based in another state (National Council for State for State Authorization Reciprocity Agreements, 2018). The present study focused on 120 online courses evaluated and approved by the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning.

Faculty members who taught these approved 120 online courses built them in Canvas, the official learning management system used by the university. These courses were delivered asynchronously during one semester, and issues arose from the point of view of the instructor or the students. When students encounter issues in the online learning interface, they would typically contact their instructor who would normally work on resolving the issues right away. However, if the instructors find the issues complicated, which is usually the case, they would contact a designated instructional designer and technologist for assistance. In the same way, if instructors encountered while teaching the courses online, they would contact the instructional designer and technologist for assistance in resolving the issues. Over time, certain issues occurred more frequently than others and indeed occurred across many courses and these issues were identified and analyzed and formed the basis of the present study.

A qualitative content analysis was employed to collect data. Originating from the communication sciences, content analysis is used to examine text and images in order to identify messages and meanings (Hartley & Morphew, 2008; Krippendorff, 2013). Content analysis is “a research method for the subjective interpretation of the content of text data through the systematic classification process of coding and identifying themes or patterns” (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005, p. 1278). Content analysis is often used for the exploration of trends, patterns, and differences among similar components (Krippendorff, 2013). One of the major reasons for using content analysis is to formulate themes out of large amounts of descriptive information and obtain information useful in solving educational problems (Fraenkel & Wallen, 2015).

In this study, content of 120 online courses taught over a period of 1 year was analyzed for issues that instructors encountered in the process of reaching them. The courses were taught asynchronously in the Canvas learning management system. The issues or problematic areas were based on various aspects of the course interface in Canvas. For example, design and technological issues would arise from aspects of the course such as grades, modularization, quiz administration, external application integration, discussion topic administration, broken links, accessing instructor feedback and other areas. Content analysis identified common issues that online instructors encountered while teaching the 120 online courses in Canvas. A Google document was purposefully created to provide space where all identified issues were systematically recorded.

Issue encountered:

• I made students watch a video, how do I make them analyze it openly in Canvas?

Action:

• Create a discussion topic in Canvas, ask students to analyze it by posting to discussion topic.

• Make sure video file is not too large or Canvas will not process and upload it.

Issue encountered:

• Instructor wanted help creating a multiple choice quiz for test preparation purposes only and with grades unrecorded in Canvas.

Action:

• Use a practice quiz because with it, students do not receive a grade but the quiz results display the number of points earned.

Issue encountered:

• Instructor wanted help embedding a picture into a specific quiz question. Original file was PDF and it could not work

Action:

• Upload the picture into Canvas files and reupload it into a quiz question.

Issue encountered:

• Instructor was having issues printing quiz items from Canvas.

Action:

• Go ahead and preview the quiz, point cursor inside quiz while still in preview, right-click and select print from the menu.

Issue encountered:

• Instructor wanted to know how they could create an “attendance” column in the grade-book.

Action:

• Take first roll call and attendance would automatically populate a column in the gradebook.

Issue encountered:

• I have unpublished assignments appearing below my syllabus in Canvas, how do I have them removed without deleting them from the course?

Action:

• Assignments had no due dates and so could not remove them from calendar. In order to remove them without deleting, they had to be imported from a previous semester and then delete the ones that were appearing under the syllabus.

Issue encountered:

• Instructor had two students complain that the Attendance feature was marking them absent when they were actually present for a class.

Action:

• The Attendance feature was indeed marking students absent on its own which was unusual. It was discovered the software had developed issues and Canvas help desk were contacted so they would resolve the issues with the application. It took Canvas a few days to resolve the issues.

Issue encountered:

• Students reported (to instructor) that they could not see instructor feedback layer on their Turnitin processed papers while comments could be seen in instructor view.

Action:

• As a temporary measure, papers had to be downloaded in annotated PDF and emailed to students. It was later figured out that the “feedback release date” feature in Turnitin advanced settings had been set to a future date. Changing the release date to “release feedback immediately” did the fix.

Issue encountered:

• Instructor wanted students to create a pod-cast, listen to each other’s and post constructive comments on their classmates’ podcasts. They wanted everyone to be able to access each other’s podcast and make comments.

Action:

• Create a discussion topic in which students would upload their podcast and be able to view and comment on each other’s.

Issue encountered:

• Instructor wanted to export a quiz in Canvas and have the export converted into a Microsoft Word file in the process.

Action:

• Import the quiz as a QTI in Respondus, go to preview and select print options and select Microsoft Word.

Issue encountered:

• How do I create a truly bonus quiz in Canvas?

Action:

• Create a quiz and give it points and let students take it. Once students take it, edit the quiz and change it to a graded survey worth zero points. The students would then receive whatever extra credit value they earned. In the event that grades disappeared while converting the quiz, go ahead and enter them manually.

Issue encountered:

• Instructor wanted help with giving true extra credit in a quiz.

Action:

• With quizzes, the only way is to manually add extra points in the gradebook or use fudge points in speed grader.

Issue encountered:

• An assignment could not allow the instructor to add a grading rubric.

Action:

• It was noted that the assignment had originally been created in Turnitin and so the instructor had to go into Turnitin optional settings and use the rubric tool.

Issue encountered:

• Instructor reported that their assignments imported from last semester were showing broken links when trying to launch in Turnitin.

Action:

• Analysis showed that assignments had been created in Turnitin LTI previously and imported into a future semester. When assignments were imported into the new course shell, University had transitioned to Turnitin API which is a different interface. Assignments had to be recreated in the API interface.

Issue encountered:

• Turnitin not processing my students’ submissions.

Action:

• Issues reported to Turnitin engineers, found to affect whole world. Turnitin engineers work to resolve issues.

Issue encountered:

• My students cannot make a discussion post and upload a picture.

Action:

• It was noted that assignments availability dates were invalid. Entered correct dates and everything worked.

Issue encountered:

• An instructor reported that his or her weighted grades were not tallying correctly in the gradebook.

Action:

• Everything looked in place but it was noted that one assignment grades were not yet in. Instructor had to wait until all grades were in and once they were, everything self-sorted out.

Issue encountered:

• Instructor wanted help with pedagogies for teaching Math online.

Action:

• List and descriptions of 21st century working pedagogies for teaching Math exclusively online provided. Instructor selected those that would work in their course. Two parties continued working together throughout the development period, making sure everything was fitting as planned.

Issue encountered:

• Instructor had issues with students not printing Grademark/Crocodoc comments which they needed to review.

Action:

• Figured it was a browser issue with Firefox. Printing did work in Chrome when tested but issue was University labs did not carry Chrome. Tested again in Explorer, did not work first time but worked with continued testing.

Issue encountered:

• Instructor had their course validity dates not showing in course details.

Action:

• The most important dates in course sections were found valid. Essentially, section dates override any dates in course details. However, correct dates were entered on the course details page nevertheless.

Issue encountered:

• Instructor reported that their student was being asked to log into Voice Thread first before accessing a project.

Action:

• Normally, students do not need Voice Thread accounts to access teacher created projects in the Canvas interface. Diagnosis showed that students had been experiencing these issues when trying to access Voice Thread projects from outside of campus. Masquerading as the student and accessing it on campus posed no problems.

Issue encountered:

• Instructor reported that several students could not make video comments in working Voice Thread project.

Action:

• Rigorous testing reveled that it was a browser issue. Students were attempting to make the video comments in Internet Explorer which did not work well with Canvas, a switch to the most recent versions of Google Chrome and Firefox solved problem.

Teaching of the 120 online courses brought out numerous issues that faculty members had to resolve for course success. The study analyzed the common issues that faculty reported during the delivery of the courses via Canvas. The issues were resolved with assistance of an instructional designer and technologist who closely worked with online teaching faculty members and walked them through the process of finding solutions.

The data clearly indicated that administering online quizzes brought out the most intriguing issues to online teaching instructors. Issues emanating from quiz administration included challenges with creating a multiple-choice quiz for test preparation purposes only with grades unrecorded, embedding a picture into a specific quiz question, printing out quiz items from Canvas, exporting a quiz in Canvas and having the export converted into a Microsoft Word file in the process, creating a bonus quiz and also giving true extra credit in a quiz. Whenever these problems occurred, the affected online instructor would contact their designated instructional designer and technologist who would work with them to resolve the problem.

It can be argued that one of the core philosophies underlining instructional design is problem solving. Hence, the designated instructional designer and technologist would make sure that a solution was found based on their knowledge and experience. In the event that issues could not be rectified between the two parties, Canvas engineers would be contacted and would most likely resolve such extreme case (technical) issues.

Issues from other areas of the online learning interface included enabling students to view and openly analyze a video in Canvas; removing unpublished assignments appearing below the syllabus without deleting them from the course; and having students create a pod-cast, listen to each other’s podcasts, and post constructive comments on their classmates’ podcasts. An instructor wanted everyone in the class to be able to access each other’s podcast and make comments but could not find the best way to do this. More common issues across the 120 online curses included the instructor not being able to add a grading rubric to the assignment, students failing to make a discussion post that required them to upload a picture, weighted grades not tallying correctly in the gradebook, instructor looking for a way to create an attendance column in the gradebook, the Attendance feature marking students absent when they were actually present for a class session, issues identifying pedagogies for teaching Mathematics online, and course validity dates not showing in course details.

Other issues emanated from using applications that work in a learning management system like Canvas. In this category, instructors experienced issues using the applications Voice Thread and Turnitin. A Voice Thread is a dynamic living conversation space that can be altered anytime. Basically, the application is about creating collaborative space with video, voice and text commenting (Voice Thread, 2018). Turnitin on the other hand is an Internet-based plagiarism-prevention service which enables submitted essays to be checked for unoriginal content. It normally integrates with Grademark, which enables instructors to grade students’ written work online by providing them the ability to add comments within the body of a paper, point out grammar and punctuation mistakes or works of art (Turnitin, 2018). Issues related with Turnitin included the application not processing students’ submissions, assignments imported from a previous semester showing broken links when launching in the application, students not being able to see instructor feedback layer on their Turnitin processed papers while feedback was given and could be seen in instructor view, and students experiencing issues when printing Grademark/Crocodoc comments that their instructor required them to review on paper. Common issues emanating from using Voice Thread included students being asked to log into Voice Thread before accessing a project and students experiencing issues making video comments on a Voice Thread project created by their instructor.

As the 120 online courses where delivered via Canvas learning management system, instructors naturally encountered instructional design and technological issues. In order to have these issues resolved, the teachers engaged the services of their designated instructional designer and technologist who would walk them through the process of solving the problems. While working with faculty to resolve the issues, rather than working alone to resolve the issues on behalf of the affected faculty member, the instructional designer and technologist employed the strategy of doing it together in instructional design (Dick et al., 2015). This process involved analyzing the issues together with the affected instructor and identifying and discussing a solution together before implementing it.

Recurring challenges with creating a multiple-choice quiz for test preparation purposes only, without recording grades, were resolved by the designated instructional designer who walked the affected instructor through a practice quiz. With a practice quiz, it was pointed out, students would not record a grade but quiz results display the number of points earned by each student. The issue of embedding a picture into a quiz question was resolved by requiring the affected instructor to upload the picture into Canvas files before reuploading it in a quiz question by editing the quiz. Issues with printing quiz items had the instructional designer and technologist proposing pointing a cursor inside the quiz in preview mode, right-clicking and selecting “print” from the menu. Issues related with exporting a quiz into a word file were perhaps the most recurring and, whenever these issues came up, the affected instructor would be walked through the process of convert the quiz into a Microsoft Word file in Respondus. With creating a bonus quiz, the instructional designer would thrash out modalities that involved create a quiz and giving it points and let students take it. Once students take it, the next step would be editing it and changing it to a graded survey worth zero points. The students would then receive whatever extra credit value they earned. In the event that grades disappeared while converting the quiz, grades would have to be entered manually. Finally, giving true credit in a quiz would mean adding extra points in the grade-book or using fudge pints in speed grader. As pointed out earlier on, these issues were solved between the affected instructor and their designated instructional designer and technologist while working together.

Issues with Turnitin not processing students’ submissions would be reported to Turnitin staff who worked to resolve them. Normally, these issues affected the whole world. In cases where assignments that were imported from a previous semester showed broken links when launching in Turnitin, the instructional designer would show the affected instructor that assignments had been created in the previous Turnitin LTI interface and when imported, Turnitin had transitioned to API which is a different interface. These assignments would have to be recreated in API. Issues related with students not being able to see instructor’s feedback on their Turnitin processed papers would normally be resolved by switching to a different browser that allowed printing annotated comments.

Issues with students being asked to log into Voice Thread before accessing a project would be resolved advising affected instructor to advise students not to use the application when off campus. Normally, as long as students are logged into Canvas on campus, they do not have to log into Voice thread again. Finally, cases that saw students experiencing issues making video comments on a Voice Thread project created by their instructor would be resolved by conducting rigorous testing that would indicate that students were using Internet Explorer to make the comments, a browser that did not integrate well with Canvas. A switch to Google Chrome or Firefox would solve the problem.

The strategy of working together to resolve instructional design and technological problems was a success. Unlike having the instructional designer and technologist solving the issues on behalf of the affected instructor, solving the problems together meant that when a particular problem recurred in the future, an instructor would be able to solve it on his or her own. However, the process did not necessarily make the online instructor an expert in resolving design and technological issues, and he or she was free to contact the instructional designer and technologist even when the problem had been resolved.

Another implication worth mentioning was the benefit that the designated instructional designer actually went away with. Sometimes issues were reported over the telephone and the affected instructors expected their partner instructional designer to solve it on the spot. Hence, the instructional designer and technologist had to be ready at all times because, most of the times, faculty members could not move forward until the problems were resolved. The process was challenging for the instructional designer and technologist because of the amount of competence and adaptation for educational technology that it demanded. Therefore, the whole process required continuous technology training, testing, researching and application.

The fact that the instructional designer and online instructors solved the issues together meant that, gradually, the instructor was able to gain proficiency in resolving low-level issues and would only require the help of the instructional designer with more complicated issues. The process was beneficial to both parties because problems impacting online teaching were timely solved and the experience of solving such problems also meant that the designated instructional designer and technologist researched into new knowledge that would of use in the future.

The analysis of the delivery of the 120 courses reviewed in this study brought out interesting issues that were solved jointly between instructors and an instructional designer and technologist. It was interesting to note that certain issues occurred more frequently than others across the courses. As a consequence, addressing these issues allowed the instructional designer and technologist to easily resolve them with the online instructor if and when they occurred again. Similarly, if the same issue affected the online instructor again, solving it was easier because he or she had been previously involved in the process of resolving it.

The importance of having steady online learning support cannot be overemphasized. While upfront planning and organization of online course content are vital for the successful implementation of an online course, issues of instructional design and technology would most likely also occur during course delivery. Implementing the strategy presented in this paper, of instructor and designer jointly resolving these issues, can be effective to streamline the process of troubleshooting, while decreasing the recurrence of instructional design and technology issues and increasing the technological skills of instructional designers and technologists and online instructors.