Standards for Online Courses: Can We Do It? Yes We Can!

Abstract

This chapter provides a real-world example of how instructional design theory can be used in academe, industry, and business to aid in the design and evaluation of online courses. It also describes how theoretical, philosophical and pragmatic aspects of instructional design were combined to develop standards and a model for an online instructional design system. We begin by establishing a need for standards in the field, followed by an outline and description of our standards. The chapter then describes how we used these standards to build an actual course. Examples are also provided of how the standards can be used to effectively evaluate online courses.