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Curriculum Issues in Online Education

What's the difference?

Is curriculum different for online learning experiences than for face to face learning experiences?  In one regard, there is a difference - online learning experiences must teach the skills necessary for the student to interact successfully in the online environment.  Until those skills are so embedded in all educational experience, they must be explicitly embedded within the curriculum for content taught online.  One of the greatest challenges for online learning is determining when students have mastered the curriculum.  Regardless of whether the course is conventional or online, assessment and curriculum must be considered together.

Curriculum and Assessment

A great starting place to consider curriculum is Understanding By Design, a book by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe.  They explain the relation between identifying the key concepts, skills, and "big questions" in the curriculum and building assessment to determine when students understand the concepts and can demonstrate the skills.  How do we know a student understands?  Designing assessment is critical if we are to be successful in education, thus, curriculum and assessment are inseparable.  Instruction should then emerge from a clear understanding of what students must know and do and how we expect to assess their learning.  

Experienced online teachers at the college level point to the importance of the syllabus and online course description.  Clearly written learning outcomes, assessment tasks accompanied by carefully designed rubrics are instructive as well as serving to inform students of expectations.  There should be a match between the outcomes described in the curriculum, the course description provided to students, and the rubrics (also provided to students) accompanying the assessments and projects.  

Planning the Curriculum 

The easy answer to the curriculum planning issue is to look to the appropriate content professional associations for guidance.  For example, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics provides up-to-date and research-based guidance into appropriate curriculum, scope and sequence, teaching techniques, etc. in the area of mathematics.  Similar guidelines or standards may be found for most all other curricular areas.  Curriculum integration is also an appropriate goal for any redesign and demands a more holistic approach to planning.  Deeper issues can be considered, though, and should be a first step as any curriculum is designed.

The process of determining what the curriculum will include is a timeless issue.  It gets at the heart of the purpose of schools.  Is our intent to develop an informed citizenry ready to participate in a democratic society?  Is our purpose to produce persons who can contribute to the economy?  Is it to enrich the mind and spirit?  The list of "primary purposes" of education goes on.  There is not total agreement (although the temptation to say "all of the above" is present) which goal(s) to emphasize.  Yet, this is exactly the starting point educators must determine if they are to create a coherent curriculum and be able to develop assessment strategies to know when mastery of the curriculum has occurred.  As stated above, there is one given with curriculum for online learning that differs from education in general - students must be given the tools to succeed in the environment and this must be an integral part of the curriculum.  Beyond this, the challenge of determining "what" is no different than for conventional classes. 

Online Resources:

• While the NEA Guide to Online High School Courses includes basic guidance for curriculum, it also speaks to issues of instructional design that interact with curriculum and is a solid resource for both planning and evaluation of online courses.
• A full text copy of the NEA research on quality online at:  Quality on the Line
• Distance Learning Resource Network - the US Department of Education site for disseminating information about distance education
• The Wellspring - an online resource (maintained by Teachers' College - Columbia University) with articles about distance education in seven areas:  assessing, collaborating, communicating, designing, implementing, programming, and teaching
• Instructional Design for Online Courses - more from the University of Illinois
• Distance Education Clearinghouse at University of Wisconsin
• Portal to the World of Knowledge - a web site with links to a tremendous set of resources for web based learning at virtually any grade level.  Highly commercial, but rich with links
• Distance Learning Policy Laboratory - The Southern Regional Educational Board Policy Laboratory has outlined several issues and is initiating study of:  faculty (including performance assessment, governance, workload), student services (financial aid, admission, registration, advising, library resources, testing), credit (standards and procedures in lieu of Carnegie unit, degree requirements across universities), access and equity (bridging the digital divide, reaching underserved populations), quality assurance (ensuring "sameness" of rigor, responding to "self-pacing" & assessment on demand), and coherence and values in distance education (conveying a frame of reference, covering all the bases when courses come from various sources).

Dunn, S. L. (2000, Mar/Apr). The virtualizing of education. The Futurist, 34-38.  

This article predicts the traditional university will have vanished by 2025.  It cites 11 mega-universities that are already online. For example, the China Central Radio and Television has more than 3 million students.  The author believes there will be two types of universities - those that "add value" in course work and those that serve as "certifying agencies".  A driving force in higher education distance education is money.  With billions of dollars spent each year, there is a great incentive for business to invest in (and originate) online courses.  K-12 education in the US will require a slightly different approach, but there is likely to be a high monetary motivation for online offerings that transcend the school district boundaries.

Intrator, S. M. (2000). Hansel and Gretel got me lost in Times Square:  Why we need to teach Hypertext writing. Knowledge Quest, 28 (5), 31-33.

The author considers the differences between writing in traditional text and utilizing web pages to communicate.  The styles differ if clarity is to be achieved and if the advantages of each medium is to be realized.  Four skills identified include:  relational thought, use of multiple symbol systems, writing with skillfully created links, graphic design.

White, K. W. & Weight, B. H. eds. The Online Teaching Guide. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon, 2000.

This is a collection of essays that address many of the critical issues in providing distance education.  The editors and some of the authors teach in one of the first online universities - the University of Phoenix.  The articles look at such critical issues as how to create a meaningful dialogue online, the importance of high quality materials, the "visibility" factor and need for frequent and appropriate feedback from the instructor, the fun/entertainment factor of online learning, dealing with conflict online, and the critical importance of the student's reading ability (particularly when the reading is technical).

Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J.  Understanding by Design.  Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development:  Alexandria, VA, 1998.

Described above - links curriculum and assessment.  The book has been so widely regarded that the authors have initiated an Understanding by Design web site (with a fee for complete services) to assist curriculum planners and assessment designers in their work.