Successful design, development and delivery of online courses: lessons from operations management and global leadership.

Lall, Vinod ; Lumb, Ruth

Abstract

The need to develop online educational opportunities has been documented. As a result of the increased demand for online educational opportunities, one of the current trends in business schools is to deliver online courses using Course Management Systems (CMS's) as well as other interactive and synchronous Internet based technology. Faculty are volunteering or are being asked to move existing courses from the traditional face- to- face (f2f) format to an online environment.

The purpose of this paper is to share with the academic community the authors' experiences in the design, development and delivery phases of online courses in Operations Management and Global Leadership. The authors have been involved with online courses at the undergraduate and graduate level at several institutions since 2001. The critical success factors for the design, development and delivery are identified primarily from an online offering of an Operations Management course at Minnesota State University Moorhead (MSUM). Lessons learned from involvement with online courses at other institutions serve as secondary sources. Readers will be provided with useful tips on how to design an online course by consolidating course content into meaningful units; develop the course using Moodle, a free open source CMS; and deliver the course using interactive technologies from Wimba, a leading provider of collaborative learning software.

I. INTRODUCTION

Teaching online courses is one of the fastest growing applications of the uses of information and telecommunications technology inside and outside higher education. Enrollment growth in online education exceeds overall higher education growth in the United States. According to The Sloan Survey of Online Learning (Allen and Seaman 2008), in fall 2007 there were approximately 3.9 million students enrolled in at least one online course in the United States. During the 2006-2007 time frame online enrollment growth rate increased by 12% while the overall higher education growth rate increased only 1.2% (Allen and Seaman 2008). A 2009 meta analysis from the Department of Education reports that: "Students who took all or part of their class online performed better, on average than those taking the same course through traditional face-to-face instruction."

Online teaching involves teaching a course partially or entirely using the Internet. Means, Toyama, Murphy, Bakia and Jones (2009) distinguish between the forms of online teaching. The first form is a substitute to face-to-face (f2f) where teaching is conducted totally online. The second form is referred to as blended or hybrid teaching and combines f2f and online components to reduce the number of f2f class sessions. Online teaching has its roots in distance education, which also includes courses offered through correspondence, television and video conferencing (Means, Toyama, Murphy, Bakia and Jones 2009).

Rationales for adopting online courses vary from institution to institution and include the following:

* Reduced cost realized as a result of efficiently developing and delivering the course content and reducing the need for physical facilities.

* Increased revenue for institutions by serving non-traditional segments such as executive education.

* Availability of content to learners who do not have access to face-to-face (f2f) courses because of mismatched academic calendars, family and work responsibilities. Student surveys at Iowa Community College Online Consortium (Abel 2005) have shown that 30-35% of those students would not have been able to participate in courses if the online courses were not available.

* 24/7 availability to course content from any location with access to the Internet. This enablers learners to control the pace at which they want to progress.

* Builds a community of learners amongst peers which in turn improves the quality of learning.

* Research undertaken by Oliver and McLoughlin (2001) has shown that online teaching can 'scaffold' learning. Scaffolding involves more competent individuals providing support to and helping others learn.

* Programs and courses developed and disseminated using the Internet can help institutions dealing with increased as well as declining enrollments.

* Leads to better retention of content by students by encouraging them to research additional material relate to the course content.

The first section of the paper includes some background on the Operations Management course and the main drivers for moving the class online. The following three sections provide information on the main processes undertaken during the design, development and delivery phases. The fifth section summarizes recommendations and suggestions required for successful design, development and delivery of online courses. The same procedure was used for the design, development and delivery of the Global Leadership course, although a different CMS platform was utilized. The examples provided herein are based on the success of the Operations Management course as well as several years of online teaching experience at our and other institutions.

II. BACKGROUND

Minnesota State University Moorhead (MSUM) was established in 1887 and offers 165 majors, emphases, and options to over 7600 undergraduate and graduate students annually. The School of Business at MSUM offers BS degree in Accounting, Business Administration (with emphasis in General Business, International Business, Management or Marketing) and Finance.

In November 2008, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty and Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) Board of Trustees Chair David Olson announced a goal to have 25 percent of all MnSCU credits earned through online courses by 2015. Since November of 2008 the School of Business at MSUM has been proactive in targeting, developing and implementing courses for online education. One of the first courses to be offered online by the School of Business is Operations Management (MGMT 380).

Operations Management is one of the five core courses in the School of Business at MSUM. It is a required course for all School of Business majors and between two to three sections of the course are available to students each semester. At least one section of the course has also been offered every summer term. The course is highly quantitative and has the following description: Operations Management is concerned with the management of an organization's operations; that is managing what an organization does. The organization may either be a service provider, a manufacturer of goods, or a combination of both and may operate either in the public sector or the private sector. This introductory course introduces some of the basic concepts of operations management. The main topics to be covered include decision-making, forecasting, materials requirement planning, scheduling and sequencing, project management, automation, inventory management, and quality assurance. The objectives of the course are:

1. To provide students with an understanding and appreciation for the interaction between operations function and other functions within an organization;

2. To develop an understanding of the major activities performed in managing the operations function; and

3. To expose students to a variety of tools and techniques used by operations managers to accomplish these activities.

Operations Management was first delivered online in a three week session during the Summer 2009 term. The main driver for the online delivery of the course was to move towards the MnSCU goal discussed above. Secondary drivers included revenue generation for MSUM. A large percentage of MSUM students work full time jobs or participate in internships during the summer months. Availability of a core course online gave these students the opportunity to continue their full time jobs as well as satisfy the credit requirements for the core courses.

III. COURSE DESIGN

APICS Operations Management Body of Knowledge (BOK) framework (APICS, 2008) was used to identify the Operations Management topics to be covered in the online course. The topics were then mapped to the course text (Stevenson, 2007) to identify and combine relevant chapters from the text into course modules. For example, the topic of quality was addressed by combining the chapters on Quality Management, Quality Control, Reliability and Acceptance Sampling from Stevenson (2007) into a single module. This modular approach using the APICS BOK was undertaken to help students in two ways. First, it helps them meet the assessment requirements of the program. Second, it helps them prepare for the job market and also exposes them to operations management related certification offered by APICS. The final design included eight different modules listed in Table 1 below.

Table 1
Course Modules

Module 1    : Introduction to Operations Management; Operations
              Strategy, Competitiveness and Productivity
Module 2    : Forecasting
Module 3    : Decision Making
Module 4    : Linear Programming and Transportation Model
Module 5    : Reliability, Quality Management and Quality Control
Module 6    : Inventory Management
Module 7    : Project Management
Module 8    : Management of Waiting Lines

IV. COURSE DEVELOPMENT

The course was developed using the Moodle platform. Moodle is an open source Course Management System (CMS) used to create sophisticated online courses. It requires minimal technical expertise on the part of faculty developing online courses or students accessing courses on Moodle. It has numerous capabilities and supports a number of technologies that permit interaction between instructor and students as well as between students. Examples of such capabilities and technologies include organization and presentation of course content, discussion forums, quizzes, grade book, chat, and online submission of student assignments.

Course modules were made available to students for a fixed period of time and students had this time to work on three main activities for the module. These activities included an assignment, a discussion forum and a quiz. The assignments were developed in Moodle and students were required to submit their assignments using the digital drop box feature in Moodle. These assignments were downloaded and graded and feedback was provided to the students.

The online quizzes were developed in an examination creator called Respondus and then imported into the Moodle classroom. The quizzes were designed keeping in mind that students may collaborate with each other when working on the quizzes. The following measures were used to deal with this issue: (1) the answers to the multiple choice quizzes were scrambled so that they appeared in a different sequence for different students; (2) the time students were allowed to complete a quiz was limited. Depending on the number of topics covered in a module a typical quiz for a module had ten to twenty multiple choice questions and was timed to be completed in fifteen to thirty minutes; (3) feedback on the online quizzes was provided to the students after the deadline to complete a quiz.

Discussion forums focused on qualitative issues related to the course content and required students to carry out some outside research and contribute to class discussions at their own convenience. Students were required to post their responses to the discussion forums, read the posting of other students and respond to the postings of other students.

Topics selected for discussion forums were on emerging and current issues related to operations management. One example of a discussion forum topic was the components of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and its applications in operations and supply chain management.

V. COURSE DELIVERY

The delivery of the course was organized in such a fashion that advantages offered by synchronous technologies were exploited to the maximum. The synchronous technology offered by Wimba was used to host live sessions that approximated f2f lectures.

There were three Wimba sessions of three hour duration each. Each session was scheduled for Monday night from 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm. Material to be used during each session was posted at the course site in advance. An e-mail with session material attached was also sent to students before the session. Time during the session was used to focus on important and difficult topics pertaining to the module for that particular week. For example, instead of showing the solution to a queuing model on a slide students were given time during the wimba session to work or, solving a queuing model. Results from the model solution were then summarized for the students using chalkboard functionality in wimba.

The archive function in Wimba was turned on before the start of each session and turned off at the end of the session. Link to the archive was posted at the course site and e-mailed to students immediately after it became available. To use capabilities of Wimba to it full extent it is necessary that students be active participants.

Attendance at the Wimba session was not mandatory but students who actively participated reported that they liked the technology, as well as the content, used during the sessions.

VI. FACTORS FOR SUCCESSFUL DESIGN, DEVELOPMENT AND DELIVERY OF ONLINE COURSES

The design, development and delivery of an online course is a process. All three stages in the process are time consuming and labor intensive, especially the first time around.

Online teaching is not uploading a mass of material to a course site for studerits to access. To be effective it is necessary to provide guidance and feedback to students on an on-going basis. This section provides some general guidelines for the successful design, development and delivery of online courses, regardless of the CMS platform and other technology components used.

The role of the faculty member is crucial to the successful implementation of any online course. In most cases, the successful design, development and delivery of an online course rest solely on the shoulders of faculty. Studies have identified several areas for instructors to focus on in order to ensure a high quality learning experience for the students and include:

1. Level of Interaetivity with Students: The instructor's level of interactivity in promoting active engagement with the online course material has been found to be more important than the mode of instructional delivery, i.e. face-to-face or online (Mandernach et al. 2009). It is also important to 'personalize' the instructor. Anderson (2004) cites Holmberg (1996) when discussing the importance of personalizing the instructor for the students. According to Holmberg, a conversational style of expression known as 'guided didactic interaction' helps the online learner identify with the instructor.

2. Use of Discourse: An effective online learning environment includes the use of online teaching strategies that incorporate discourse as part of the pedagogical design. According to A1-Shalchi (2009), both synchronous and asynchronous online dialogue is an important component for effective online learning. Anderson (2002) states that one of the critical roles that an instructor performs in an online learning environment is the creation and implementation of strategies that will encourage discourse between and among students, between the instructor and the student, and between individual students and groups of students and content resources.

3. Supportive Environment: It is important to provide a supportive environment so students feel comfortable and 'safe' when expressing their ideas in a collaborative context. By developing a sense of trust and safety, students will not feel uncomfortable and constrained in posting their comments. One way of creating this trust is to have each student post a brief personal and professional biographical sketch. Another way is to create a forum where students discuss issues and topics not related to the course content. This will create a feeling that the class knows each other and would be more open and comfortable when asked to post comments online.

Specific ways to ensure that the aforementioned three areas are supported include the following:

* Design and Functionality: Before courses are opened and made available to students they must be reviewed for content as well as design and functionality. The content must be reviewed by a subject matter expert and the design and functionality must be reviewed by a course designer with experience in the CMS used for the course.

* Ease of Navigation: Design and develop the course so it is easy for students to navigate the course site. The focus should be more on the course content and less on the technology being used. Technical issues of online teaching are secondary to the personal implications of teaching and learning online.

* Initial Student Contact: Several days before the start of the course e-mail a welcome letter to the students enrolled in the class. In this letter summarize the course format, course schedule, course text, link to the course site and the procedure to login to the course site, link to a tutorial on the CMS being used as some students may need 'ramp up" time on navigation skills, link to and procedure for accessing the live sessions on Wimba or other similar system, communication tools to be used, course text etc.

* Use of Modules: If the course content allows, break down the class into a number of modules with each module addressing closely related topics. This concept of using modular units makes it easy to update the course content for subsequent offerings of the course. For the Operations Management course we initially focused on three activities discussed in one of the above sections. It is our intent to add additional content such as multimedia features, virtual plant trips, minicases to the existing modules.

* Supplementary Material(s): Use existing material available on the web to help students understand difficult concepts. For example, instead of referring to a page from the course text to show students on how to use the solver functionality in excel find and use a virtual tutor that accomplishes the same task.

* Use of Forums: Create a forum called 'Course Resources' and post copies of the welcome letter, course syllabus, assignment solutions and feedback, slides for Wimba sessions, links to Wimba archives under this forum.

* Student Concerns: Create a'Course Related Questions' forum and ask students to post their questions, concerns and comments in this forum. Students should be advised to minimize the use of e-mail for course related questions. However, questions and responses to student e-mails should be posted at this forum.

* Deadlines: Strictly enforce the deadlines for module openings and closings, quizzes and assignments.

* Course Access: Access the course site frequently and at different times and use the announcement feature on a regular basis. Chat with students at the course site and answer any questions they might have. Interactions such as these ensure that students are not isolated.

* Student Assessment: Track student performance and provide them with personalized individual feedback on assignments and quizzes. After a major course deliverable is graded and grades posted let the students know about the class performance by posting statistics such as the average and standard deviation. Assessment for postings should address both the quantity and quality expected.

* Synchronous Session Expectations: If synchronous sessions using Wimba or another similar platform are a requirement, make sure that the information is included in the course schedule and students are aware of the requirement before they register for the class. (Of the thirty three students enrolled in the operations management class, a small minority complained about using the three hour fixed time slot for class meetings).

* Student Responsibility: In order for the online learning experience to be successful and to use the capabilities of Wimba or a similar platform, it is necessary for students to be active participants. Students should be informed of their responsibilities. For example, a reminder to students to equip themselves with headphones that have built-in microphones and to use them during the Wimba sessions would mean the difference between a successful and nonsuccessful session.

VI. CONCLUSION

The Internet is proving to be a powerful tool in higher education because of the benefits it offers. A primary benefit is that higher education institutions can use the internet to distribute online courses to increase the number of students served and/or the number of classes available. According to a report by the Sloan Consortium (2008) an increasing number of academics feel that offering online courses is critical to their institution's long-term strategy and a majority of academic leaders believe that learning outcomes for online courses are equal or even superior to those for face-face instruction. From a managerial perspective, the introduction of high-quality online courses will increase the university's visibility and increase profits.

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VINOD LALL AND RUTH LUMB

Minnesota State University Moorhead