As part of my M.Ed. I completed a major project focused on supporting faculty in the teaching  of online courses for post-secondary students. You can access my project here: Effective strategies for supporting faculty in teaching high quality e-learning courses in post-secondary education.

My project consisted of the development of a fully-online course focused on supporting faculty members who have already developed a course (or who have inherited a course) and who want to know how to teach online. Topics included online communication strategies, facilitation strategies, community building strategies, and online assessment and evaluation. Each topic was coupled with practical technical support in using VIU’s technology tools to support these strategies.

Part of my major project involved using and applying quality assurance tools and design  frameworks to my development of the course. These allowed me to understand the practical application of these tools, and lead to further explorations of this topic with colleagues.

The process of developing this course led me to my current understanding of the critical concept of iterative development. Many conversations around course development tend to focus on contract work, which frames conversations in the idea that course development has a distinct “end date”. Although there may be an end date in the sense that the course needs to be ready to be offered to students, there should be a shared understanding that online courses are never “done”. After offering the course, it is important to reflect, gather feedback, and plan improvements for the future. I believe that expanding our conception of online course development to include the idea of iterative improvement will provide a framework for more robust, better quality courses for our students.