How to Teach Online: What the Research Says

Though there are some research results to guide best practice in online teaching and learning, these studies still represent a new frontier in educational research. With many faculty members being encouraged to go online, there is an urgent need for a review of the early research in this area to help guide faculty members’ understanding about effective ways to teach online (Broad, 1999). This article, then, provides our review of current research regarding online instruction to help faculty members make research-informed decisions regarding online course design, course management, course learning environment, and course evaluation. We will provide seven helpful hints and back them up with research results.Greene and Land (1999) explored instructional scaffolds to support cognitive functioning. They found that guiding questions helped students focus and develop their projects. Students needed real-time, back-and-forth discussion that did not allow them to ignore confusion.Some researchers discovered that supplementary resources and organization of delivery helped students. Cooper (1999) provided online resources and course materials in folders for each week of the course and found positive results. Students could find timely course announcements, lecture notes, and chapter questions and answers. Bee and Usip (1998) found that students who used supplementary materials, tutorials, and general course information that were provided online, realized improved course performance and improved knowledge of cyberspace over those who did not use the materials.Other research interests included pace of instruction and delivery features. The results of the research on pace were mixed. Schrum (1995) found that students appreciated being able to move through the course at their own pace with successful students moving more quickly through the course than less-successful students. Mayer and Chandler (2001) explored the benefits of a modest amount of computer-user interactivity that determined the pace of the presentation. Students performed better on transfer but not retention of material.Davidson-Shivers, Tanner, and Muilenburg (2000) were interested to learn which is better: synchronous or asynchronous discussion. They found chats provided a direct immediate environment for responses, while listserv responses were delayed but more focused and purposeful. Kanuka and Anderson (1998) raised concerns about students posting inconsistent and unchallenged ideas and concluded that online interactions provided little negotiated meaning or new knowledge construction. Ahern and El Hindi (2000) shared the same concerns; they created the IdeaWeb to improve peer-to-peer discourse, allowing self-management of discussions by students.Winograd (2000) explored the effect of a moderator in online conferences, developing a theory that even a low degree of moderation techniques allowed a group to form a community, as determined by the elements of camaraderie, support, and warmth. The online environment does seem to offer a unique social advantage for some students. Sullivan’s (2002) research pointed to the advantage of anonymity in a networked learning environment. Respondents suggested “it’s easier to be yourself if you’re invisible” (p. 139) and “there is no stereotyping or bias” (p. 139). Althaus (1997) conducted a study to examine whether supplementing a face-to-face discussion with computer-mediated discussions would enhance academic performance. He pointed out that because online discussions do not occur in real time, students are able to log on and join the discussion when it is convenient, and have more time to read messages, reflect on them, and compose thoughtful responses. He concluded that students who were actively involved in the computermediated discussions earned higher grades than other students.Mikulecky (1998) compared class discussions in online and campus-based versions of a graduate course on adolescent literature. Electronic interchanges were no less productive than in campus-based instruction and were characterized by the following patterns: (1) rich descriptive presentations of situations, dilemmas, and solutions; (2) detailed, thoughtful responses and counter responses to fellow students including suggestions for further professional development; (3) comments to link to one’s own experiences as well as spur and synthesize new thoughts; (4) sharing of troubling professional experiences and provision of support to others; and (5) occasional debate.Vonderwell (2003) conducted a qualitative case study to examine asynchronous communication experiences and perspectives in an online course. The instructor attempted to facilitate class discourse through e-mail and discussion boards. Vonderwell learned that students were uncomfortable about interacting with students they did not know prior to taking the course. Online instructors need to know group processes and dynamics as well as strategies of how to engage students in effective communication and learning. Therefore, it is important to establish a community of learners (Knupfer, Gram, Wilson Dooley Schifter, 2001). Faculty expressed a need for course development assistance and a system of evaluation and assessment of distance education and faculty. Two studies related to instructor experiences in course preparation (Gibson Zhang, 1998) discussed the need for time for development of the courses. In the first study, faculty said that the preparation of courses was much more time-consuming than they had expected. They said they needed released time for course development. The researchers in both studies concluded that faculty members need assistance both during the development of the course and during the delivery of the courses.Regarding students in online classes, few studies reported results about technical support. In one study, students did say they wanted administrative support in online courses for grade reporting, helping with scheduling courses online, online admissions, appropriate fees for online courses, and tuition payments offered online for the convenience of online students and other students (Vallejo, 2001). Administrators polled in another study believed that their job related to online learning was to facilitate delivery of high-quality courses (Husmann other sections received rewards in the form of mini-quizzes after previewing chapter outlines. Students who were rewarded did access the FAQs pages more often than not, and those who used the FAQs pages received high scores on the FAQs-related questions on the midterm examination, but not on the cumulative final examination. Students with the chapter outline mini-quizzes did not access the chapter outline pages at a significantly higher rate than those who did not have the quizzes. Also, a significant number of the students waited until 2 days prior to the due date to access their respective pages, and did not return to the FAQs or chapter outline pages to review for the final examination at a significantly higher rate than those who had not received the rewards. Thus, the gains in examination performance were shortlived and did not show any effect on performance during the cumulative final examination.Along the same lines of study, Schnackenberg and Sullivan (2000) designed a project to look for links between learner control and learner effectiveness. They also theorized that students who took more control would have more positive attitudes toward their computerassisted instructional programs than those under a more-controlled program, but there was no significant difference in achievement between the program control group and the learner control group even though satisfaction was greater.To investigate a persistent concern of academic integrity in online learning, researchers (Ridley Olt, 2002).We may need to adapt a new perspective when we plan and administer evaluations in online courses. In traditional classrooms, evaluation is used for promoting learning, guiding instructional decision making, diagnosing learning and performance problems, and determining what students have learned (Ormrod, 2003). Teachers and students are most likely to be interested in the function of determining what students have learned. Because information obtained from the evaluation process usually is used for summative purposes or making judgmental decisions, fairness of the evaluation is the biggest concern of teachers and students in regular classrooms, therefore, standardization of instruments and the process of the evaluation is very desirable from a traditional perspective of evaluation.In an online environment, instructors at least partially lose the standardization of content and format in evaluation, and therefore need to alter their view of how evaluation is done for their instruction. The formats of assessment that they have been using in traditional instruction, such as term papers and multiple-choice questions, may not provide valid and comprehensive information on students’ learning. Educators have been trying a great variety of evaluation practices in the online environment, and what they reported in research papers features one thing: multiple criteria.The multiplicity of online evaluation is reflected in domains covered in the evaluation. Educational psychologists have categorized students’ learning into different domains. For example, Bloom, Englehart, Furst, Hill, and Krath-wohl (1956) proposed classifications of learning in cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains. Gagné (1985) divided learning outcomes into five domains of verbal information, intellectual skills, cognitive strategies, attitudes, and psychomo-tor skills. In traditional classrooms, evaluation is usually focused on the cognitive domain; that is, students’ acquisition and use of information. For online instruction, instructors broaden the scope of their evaluation to cover other domains too, especially the affective and psycho-motor domains.The cognitive domain is still the area with the highest interest for teachers and students in online courses. Traditional tools of evaluation, such as multiple-choice questions and in-class examination, are still commonly used in the online environment (Dellana, Collins, Gilliver, Randall, Hiltz, 1993; Maki, Maki, Patterson, McManus, 2000; Smith, Smith, Edwards Hansen Richards Gunawardena Mortensen Swan et al., 2001; Wells, 2000). Other variables in the affective domain, such as computer anxiety, were also investigated in research (Maki et al., 2000).In the psychomotor domain, researchers took advantage of the fact that computers automatically recorded the interactions between the user and the machine to study students’ learning behaviors in the online environment. Taraban, Maki, and Rynearson, (1999) observed how students in online classes spent their studying time and compared it with the pattern of time-spending in regular classrooms. They found students in both conditions shared the same behavioral pattern of “cramming” for tests. The frequency and amount of time students log in to the Websites of online courses are behaviors of researchers’ common interest (Ahern Taraban et al., 1999). Researchers also used computers to simulate real problem-solving situations to evaluate the procedural knowledge of students, such as using computer applications in an authentic situation (McManus, 2000) or operating in chemical engineering laboratories (Williams, Hilliard, Smith, Hoo, Wiesner, Parker, Schrum, 1995) assessed learner characteristics and tried to align their instruction to characteristics that would maximize the effectiveness of online instruction. Putting a test bank or homework assignments online to allow students to have multiple attempts to complete tests or homework is a common practice in online courses (Maki Gunawardena Mortensen Swan, Shea, Fredrickson, Pickett, Pelz, Wells, 2000). Finally, the multiplicity of online evaluation is reflected in the formats of the evaluation. Online instructors do not primarily rely on tests, examinations, and homework assignments to determine students’ learning. Questionnaires administered in online courses and correspondences between students and between instructors and students provide instructors with enriched information to evaluate not only what students learn but how they learn. It is worth noting that the content analysis of students’ online correspondences (Kanuka Muilenburg, 2000) is a unique format of evaluation for online instructors. Not only did the researchers demonstrate that analysis of online correspondences revealed depth and effectiveness of students’ learning process, they also provided useful references for analysis, such as classifying the content into substantial (relevant to learning) and unsubstantial (irrelevant to learning) categories (Muilenburg & Berge, 2000) or into different levels of knowledge construction (Kanuka & Anderson, 1998).Currently, there are many writers telling us what they used in their classes that they believed worked well. Books are published about how to teach online, but much of the literature we reviewed did not have a foundation based on sound research. Our seven strategies are easy to apply in online courses and are based on empirical evidence that they work well. We hope our work will enhance the experiences of online learners.A grayscale portrait of Mary K. Tallent-Runnels with her professional title, affiliation, address, phone number, and email.Mary K. Tallent-Runnels, Associate Professor of Educational Psychology, College of Education, Texas Tech grayscale portrait of Cooper with her professional title, affiliation, address, phone number, and Associate Education, Texas Tech grayscale portrait of with professional title, affiliation, address, phone number, and Lan, Professor of Educational Psychology, Texas Tech of Associate Professor and at Texas Tech with her Associate and College of Education, Texas Tech Texas of of at College of with Texas Tech of College of Texas Tech