Quality Online Courses:
Michigan Virtual University has created and published a set of Instructional Design Standards for Quality Online Courses. [link via SiT]. Looks well-thought out and useful.
Will faculty use it? I’m sure MIVU faculty use it, because MIVU is aimed at workforce training. However, it has been my experience that in higher education (as opposed to K12 or corporate training), faculty resist instructional design. Higher Ed is an oddity in the education marketplace. Everyplace else, instructional designers work with subject-matter experts to develop a curriculum, but frequently in Higher Ed, the faculty (who are almost always subject-matter experts with no formal training in education or instructional design) are left to their own devices to design courses. In the traditional face-to-face classroom, this often doesn’t show problems because methods are fairly well-established. Transition those same faculty to online courses, and their lack of familiarity with instructional principles really begin to show. These MVU standards or something similar could be very effective in helping with that, if faculty can overcome their resistance to “being told how to teach their course.”