Web-Based Learning is a welcome addition to the distance education literature of handbooks, system overviews, do-it-yourself tomes, and strategy books. Organization and pedagogical features enhance what may be the first textbook intended for graduate instructional design students in an instructor-led course. The book is a 376-page volume that takes the reader through each phase of online course design and provides a case example which describes how and what might happen during each phase of a design project titled “Gardenscapes.”
The text provides a design process structure that sequences activities for completing a reader-selected project. Each chapter begins with two pedagogical features: a half-page overview of the chapter content which is then followed by measurable objectives. The first two chapters establish a systems and theoretical context for distance education for the design process. Chapter 1, titled “Overview of Web-Based Instruction, Web-Based Learning Environments, and Web-Based Learning Communities,” introduces readers to Web-based instruction and chapter 2 (“Foundations of Web-Based Instructional Design”), to learning theory applied to Web-based instruction and to the authors’ WBID model. After the first two chapters, the remaining eight chapters describe the design and development processes in the authors’ Web-based instructional design (WBID) model.
The authors prepare the reader to use the text with a detailed preface describing the purpose of important text features such as the GardenScapes case example and chunked sections accompanied by learner activities for applying the principles or concepts introduced in each chunk. The sample project, Gardenscapes, provides the context for how a team might follow the WBID model to design a course. The authors divide the case example into about 50 Gardenscapes sections interspersed throughout chapters 3 through 10. Following each Gardenscapes section, an “On Your Own” section prompts readers with questions about the process described in that section and with activities to complete preparatory documents or sections for design documents. Each chapter has a summary “Wrapping Up” followed by reflective chapter questions in an “Expanding Your Expertise.”
Befitting a textbook, each of 10 chapters opens with chapter objectives and all but the first chapter ends with four case studies. Chapter titles can double as an advance organizer for the WBID model: Chapter 3 Analysis: Considering Outcomes, Context, and Learners; Chapter 4 Analysis: Considering Instructional Content for Web-Based Instruction; Chapter 5 Planning the Evaluation of Web-Based Instruction; Chapter 6 Concurrent Design: WBI Preplanning and Design Tasks; Chapter 7 Concurrent Design: Instructional and Motivational Strategy Planning; Chapter 8 Concurrent Design: Putting Design Plans into Development Action; Chapter 9 Implementation: Establishing a Sense of Community; Chapter 10 Conducting Summative Evaluation and Research. The text includes features tailored to help the novice Web course designer through the process; the case example, case studies, glossary, and two appendices are accompanied by invaluable Web site resources. An “On Your Own” section following each Gardenscape section presents a set of activities for applying the skills to the reader’s project.
Chapters 2 through 10 end with four case studies, one each for PK-12, business and industry, military, and higher education, in an “Extending Your Skills” section. Less than a page, each case study briefly summarizes a scenario, and all four are followed by a standard set of questions to prompt discussion about the case study. The case studies present minimal information that should serve as a general context for discussion of how the processes presented in the chapter could be applied. The case studies, while providing no answers, should stimulate questions among novice designers using the text addressing expert designer concerns. Some may prove too brief to stimulate more than confusion without additional guidance.
The glossary includes technical design definitions for about 100 terms, such as asynchronous, distributed learning, gap, milestone, navigation, portal, storyboard, triangulation, etc. The glossary may be especially useful for novices unfamiliar with jargon common among distance educators and designers; some might judge a few entries could be replaced with more contemporary terms in a future edition; for example, avatar for browser, if Second Life persists as a viable instructional venue. On the other hand, the convenient glossary gives the instructor and students a common glossary of design and distance education terms.
Two appendices summarize supporting processes for Web course design. A 20-page appendix, “Methods and Tool for Gathering Data and Information,” addresses how to use surveys, interviews, observations, extant data, etc. for analysis and formative/summative evaluation. A second 15-page appendix has a concisely useful guide to navigation design, principles of graphic message design, formatting and creating a flowchart for instructional process, storyboard templates, and implementation notes. The very brief comments on style, learning management systems and implementations introduce the concepts to learners, but not much more.
Befitting a text for distance educators and designers, the authors provide some very useful Web resources through the publisher’s companion Web site. The Web resources list chapter resources and design documents. The first of six subsections “Further Information,” lists the same 30-plus Web site titles and URLs in four categories for each chapter; no need to look at each one since each “Further Information” link leads to the same list. The Gardenscapes Web site section links to the first two online lessons of the case example, Gardenscapes, displays a simple navigation system with lesson content and an online format corresponding to the design document included on the Web site.
Each Web site chapter section titled “On Your Own” has a link to a different set of activities which requires the student to apply the concepts and to practice skills presented in the chapter. The Web site also has a section “Figures and Tables” with a link for each that opens a pdf file with complete set of 52 figures and 66 tables in the text. Many of the tables summarize important design concepts, such as 5.2 Comparison of Formative and Summative Evaluation. Other tables capture and summarize design concepts such as learner analysis, context analysis, and writing goals and objectives.
The real centerpiece of the incredible online resources would be the 51-page design document for the case example. The design document contents correspond to the data requirements for the numerous sequential design activities in the text and online. The activities often require the student to complete a table or chart provided in the course Web resources. Students complete tables, charts and answer questions as they learn about each phase of design, see examples, and apply the concepts and principles covered in the text to their projects. A seven-page implementation checklist for the example case completes the design document resources.
I have a few comments and suggestions for educators considering the text and for the authors for what I hope will be a next edition. Despite the guidelines for selecting a design project and given activities for selecting a project which should take a novice about two hours to complete, students may still have to have help selecting a project. The text leads the reader through an example design project, Gardenscapes, and by applying the same process to the reader’s own design project which the text implies the reader-student selects. Although they have guidelines and activities for selecting a project, novices may need additional help from an instructor to choose a project that is feasible in scope and content for the novice. To assume guidelines work like a job aid would be gross oversimplification of the skill required to define project scope. Futhermore, an instructor would want to review student project selections for appropriate scope, given the students and the curriculum.
The publisher’s Web site contains what some may consider a treasure as valuable as the textbook guidance: the design document resulting from the Gardenscapes processes reported in the almost 50 Gardenscapes sections in chapters 3 through 8. Students benefit from the process description aggregated from the Gardenscapes sections and then being able to read the corresponding design document resulting from the process. The authors have provided a powerful instructional example.
On the other hand, some internal inconsistencies may confuse novice designers and take some interpretation. For example, alignment between the chapter 2 WBID model description and the chapter titles for same concept. One of the six types of analyses is referred to as a goal analysis in the text but an outcome in the chapter headings. Figure 2.12 had different component labels from those in the text describing Figure 2.12; the concurrent design phase includes initial implementation but the text lists initial implementation as a subsection of implementation. While these are minor inconsistencies, they must reconciled by the reader.
The online information on the publisher Web site is a rich resource, but the publisher’s implicit data warehousing for the profile and quiz features could be problematic. Faculty should consider online course design standards and legal requirements when deciding to use these two features which require faculty and student user data. Faculty may want to ask about their university policy on using third-party instructional delivery and record-keeping systems over which the university has no control or legal authority. Since most of the user input data to the publisher server is redundant with university-stored data and also legally required to be stored on university servers, these sections may be irrelevant or prohibited by university policy. This may be why the link to the syllabus manager on the publisher Web site yielded a “no longer available” message. Educators may want to avoid recording data in two places for another reason—the time for faculty to maintain and learners to use two systems. Therefore, faculty may not be able to or choose to use quizzes on the publisher’s Web site.
An instructor who chooses to use the activities will want to carefully review the activities listed in the text and on the Web for two reasons. First, thoughtful discussion questions are interspersed with requirements to prepare supporting documents for design process; faculty will have to identify which is which since they are neither organized by these categories nor indicated by some visual cue. The second reason is that instructors will want to review activities for adaptations that may be required if using a different model since the text and Web activities are integrated with the WBID model. Although an instructor could use a different model, that might require adaptation of activities and materials or providing other materials. On the other hand, keeping the WBID model may be a relatively easy way to introduce novice designers to an alternative to more traditional design models. The WBID model has most of the same components as more traditional design models although emphasis and sequencing may differ.
Instructors may want to encourage students to use the table of contents and the Figure 2.12 model as advance organizers. The chapter introductions, written in a paragraph form, are not as accessibly organized as a bulleted list or semantic Web might be. Another possible improvement for a future edition would be to replace some secondary sources such as other texts with more peer-reviewed research.
The Web site quizzes should be downloadable from an obvious link. Given the legal implications mentioned earlier, faculty may only be able to use quizzes if imported to their own institution’s servers; therefore, the downloadable quiz should be in a format that can be imported into a learning management system with minimum adjustments. The authors should also include the reference for the PDF guidelines in the PDF document from the Web site. Without Adobe Professional, one cannot add the reference; therefore, to encourage those who download the file to follow copyright, the file should include an APA reference for Web site PDF documents.
The textbook features and complimentary Web resources guide for the novice designer to engage in one of the most challenging and complex design tasks—designing for instructor-led, online instruction. Davidson-Shivers and Rasmussen have tackled a formidable job, and the result fills a gap in the literature for the distance education course textbook-buying market, an especially tiny one when compared to the educational psychology one, for example. This fact alone moves the book into the labor-of-love category and one that graduate faculty should carefully consider adopting for any class in which students are learning to design Web-based courses.
