Course Design Factors Influencing the Success of Online Learning

This paper looks at factors affecting the success of asynchronous online learning through an investigation of relationships between student perceptions and course design factors in one of the largest asynchronous learning networks in the country. It finds that three such factors -consistency in course design, interaction with course instructors, and active discussion – have been consistently shown to significantly influence the success of online courses. It is posited that the reason for these findings relates to the importance of building community in online courses. Among the many and various possibilities occasioned by the growth of the World Wide Web (WWW), one of the most promising is distance education. In the rush to create online courses, however, the major focus has too often been on technological issues, whereas, as Mason (1994, p. 52) argues, “Social and pedagogical issues play by far the bigger part in the creation of a successful [online] learning environment.” In this paper, we document the efficacy of pedagogical approaches which foster online community. We first review the literature on the effects of course design features on student satisfaction and learning online. We then report our own findings on these topics from data collected during the Spring, 1999 semester from SUNY Learning Network (SLN) courses. Finally, we discuss these findings in the light of social constructivist theory.