Online education provides many advantages for its stakeholders. Anne Moore of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University believes that it offers “creative possibilities for customization and flexibility in learning activities.” Hossein Arsham suggests that the greatest benefit of online learning is the high degree of interactivity that it offers. Employing online learning does however present challenges, especially for instructional designers who must develop instructional material that learners will experience without any human facilitation. Let’s discuss how the organization plan for this type of deliverable might be different, how content developed for this media might provide guidance for learners in the absence of a human facilitator, and how the instructional designer can ensure that learning is taking place.
The organization of any learning intervention that does not include human facilitation must provide some mechanism that addresses the components of instruction that are typically addressed via human interaction. Learning interventions that include human interventions provide the opportunity for the human instructor to make adjustments at any given moment. This capability can be addressed in online instruction with the implementation of adaptable, compound learning objects. Adaptable, compound learning objects provide a facility for adjusting the object in order to address changing needs (Boyle, n.d.).
A second consideration for instructional designers developing online instruction that does not include human facilitation is how to provide guidance for learners in the absence of human facilitation. One approach to this issue could be to design the instruction in a way that students have access to independent learning objects that allow them to gain access to supplemental materials as required. Studies have found that implementing this approach actually reduces the time required to reach instructional objectives by as much as 54% (Fletcher, 2001).
A third issue that must be addressed by an instructional designer who is developing online instruction where there will be no human facilitation is to design the instruction in a way that learning can be monitored. This can be accomplished by creating independent learning objects that are in fact assessments. Although there may not be human facilitation, humans can review the results of these assessments to validate if learning has occurred.
