Developing Online Courses: Ten Myths

Rural Special Education Quarterly, Spring 2004 by Maddux, Cleborne D

Abstract

Online education carries many benefits for individuals in rural areas as well as individuals with disabilities. The rapid growth of online courses and the increased number of institutions moving to online education has resulted in many instructors beginning to develop online courses for the first time. The article presents ten common myths that have sprung up concerning online course design and delivery, and offers accurate information regarding these misconceptions.

There is currently widespread interest and enthusiasm about online education at all levels, particularly with regard to the great potential benefits for those living in rural areas and for those students with disabilities. One index of the near-unanimous optimism concerning the potential of online education to benefit those in rural and remote areas is that a recent search with a popular search engine using the search string +"online education" and +"benefit for rural" produced more than 3,200 hits. Many of these sites also emphasize benefits of online education for persons with disabilities, especially for those individuals who reside in rural or remote areas.

The recent increased enthusiasm for online education has prompted colleges and universities to begin to move aggressively to encourage faculty members to develop online courses, certificate programs, and even complete undergraduate and graduate degrees. The trend toward online education prompted Williams (2000) to observe that the two primary influences on today's academic institutions are the Internet and the increasing demand for online courses. Indeed, according to the United States General Accounting Office (2002), an estimated 84 percent of all four-year institutions in the U.S. offered online education courses in 2002, and about 1.5 million of the 19 million postsecondary students in the U.S. took at least one distance education course during the 1999-2000 school year (the most recent year for which statistics are available).

The increased campus administrative desire to produce online courses and offer them as soon as possible has meant that many professors who are less than technologically expert find themselves pressured to develop such courses. Unfortunately, few campuses seem to be providing adequate training and support for faculty who are willing to design, produce, and offer online coursework. Therefore, a number of myths and misconceptions have sprung up about the nature of Web-based courses, students, and course design. The purpose of this article is to identify ten of the more pervasive of these myths and misconceptions, and to provide more useful information about these topics. The ten myths were selected after a review of the literature and from experiences of the author.

Myth #1-It is not important to make sure that online courses are accessible to people with disabilities.

Given the recent increased awareness about the importance of physical accessibility on post secondary education, it is surprising that many Web pages seem to reflect little or no attention to Web accessibility (Maddux, 2001). The importance of web accessibility is especially important for online courses developed for special educators, children with disabilities, or the parents of children with disabilities. All course developers should be made aware of the fact that there are at least 35 million people with disabilities in the United States and about 740 million people with disabilities worldwide (Lazarro, 1998).

In response to the critical need for Web accessibility, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has developed extensive guidelines including Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (World Wide Web Consortium, 1999). (The W3C was founded by the inventor of the Web, Tim Berners-Lee at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and currently consists of over 400 member organizations with a goal of ensuring interoperability of Web hardware and software and providing an open forum for discussion.) Version 2.0 of the accessibility guidelines have been published in draft form (World Wide Web Consortium, 2003). A discussion of each of the specific W3C guidelines is beyond the space limitations of the current article. Interested readers are referred to the W3C Guidelines, which are available online, and to an article by Maddux (2001) written specifically for those interested in developing Web sites for rural special education. Maddux provides extensive technical advice, but suggests that novices could profit by simply keeping in mind the rule that all visual elements in an online page should also be fully explained or described in text. Additionally, tables should be used only for tabular material and the use of frames avoided.

All course developers should be familiar with the W3C Guidelines and sensitive to the fact that many individuals who stand to profit the most from online education are those who have various disabilities. It is not difficult to build accessibility into Web sites, and it is critical for individuals with disabilities, many of whom would be excluded from participation in online education if courses lack accessibility.