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Online Learning News and Research
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Wednesday, February 05, 2003
Designing for Learners, Designing for Users - Dave Smulders, eLearn Magazine
I recently conducted some online course usability reviews for a client when I came across a strange but, I suspect, not unusual phenomenon that I have encountered elsewhere in the past. Threaded discussion areas are one of the mainstays of the traditional online course and one expects to see a high level of interaction there, yet I was dismayed to see that a considerable proportion of the online discussion in these courses was focused on troubleshooting the technical failings and logistical flaws of the course, with very little discussion about the actual course content. In one example, students attempted over a period of two weeks of asynchronous discussion to arrange a time for a synchronous chat. What were these students actually learning? Looking at this course, I was beginning to wonder if at the end of the session the only thing the students learned was how to use the technical features of the course, and even that was borderline!
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