Research-based Online Course Development for Special Education Teacher Preparation

Distance education utilizing online courses has emerged as an area of program development for many teacher education programs. Online course learning management systems, such as Blackboard.com, have made putting a course online a relatively simple task; however, in many cases, the online course is little more than a correspondence course with a discussion forum and web resource links. Because individual instructors are developing these courses using the structure of the web-based learning management programs as their pedagogical guidance, instructional design assistance is needed. Online courses must be developed using an analysis of input factors such as learner characteristics, instructional intent, and nature of the content so informed instructional design decisions can be made that result in quality courses.