Web-based Training Design and Development
It's easy, and often tempting, to simply throw a few Web pages on to a server and call it an online course. Actually, we could call such a work an online course, but it's effectiveness would be lost. When you teach in a classroom, you are purposely organizing and presenting information in order to reach a specific learning goal. The same is true in Web-based training.
To say that instruction describes a system or gives information about a procedure is not to define its purpose. Very few students want a "description" or "general information". The overall purpose of Web-based training is to help students learn a subject while getting full value from the system - to get their moneys worth. Categorically, online text has been expected to help in two ways:
- instruction - teaching people how to do something.
- reference - giving people definitions, facts, and codes that would be difficult to memorize.
When a student is already well educated, experienced, and the subject matter pertains to their field of expertise this simple classification works well. Run documents (instruction) and lookup pages (reference) are all that a resourceful student would probably need.
Instruction, however, is a bit too large to be considered one category. We can split this category into two parts:
- Orientation - contains material, such as tutorials, used to train the beginning student. Orientation traditionally begins "at the bottom", with the basic definitions and concepts.
- Guidance - includes process demonstrations or activities directed toward the competent or experienced student. Guidance is teaching by the demonstration and showing of whole procedures and transactions, from the top down, and is aimed at a person who has a general knowledge of the subject material.
References are a compressed presentation of facts and information, and are useful mainly to people who know what they already need to know. Highly experienced people may need nothing else while beginning and intermediate students need more.
The change in the type of students attracted to the Web has created a need for a fourth function and this is motivation. Motivation is the art of getting people to do what they are reluctant to do; it is the selling of ideas and methods. Put simply, many problems in learning can be blamed on reluctance, not ignorance. Whether from insecurity or laziness, many students simply will not use their training the way we, as instructors, think they should. They must be "sold".
There are many models of instructional development and processes, but I have yet to find one that deals specifically with Web-based instruction development. The Web is so dynamic that it is difficult to create a standard. Rather than worry about how flexible and powerful the Web is becoming, we can still use existing models to plan our instruction.
As we plan, we can decide on what tools we want to use. Later, when we evaluate, we can decide whether or not to incorporate a new tool, improve on the use of one we're already using, or scrap the use of a tool entirely.
As with any other complex undertaking, Web-based training development has a life cycle. Whether all of your materials are online, or just the lesson plan, development is never really finished. Again, new tools and improvements to existing tools become available and they may affect the delivery of the instruction. New findings in the subject may be added to the material, and any errors in the existing text will need to be corrected.
Basically, the process of planning requires four steps:
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Last Modified: February, 2005