Developing a criteria set for an online learning environment

Although designing an online course is a difficult task, it is one that is faced by educators almost on a daily basis. There is a lot of pressure to put one’s course online and little research available for the “best” way to do it. There are course management systems that aid in the procedural tasks, but we still don’t know the optimal design for an online course. This paper presents a study to develop a criteria set for excellence in online courses, from the student perspective. A two-fold approach was taken in this study. A group of students “brainstormed” a criteria list of important factors for an online learning environment. A second group of students then validated the criteria. A factorial analysis was performed analyzing the criteria by rating and rank order