The Analysis On The Instructional Design Of American Online Courses

The development of Computer and Network Technology has facilitated social progress and educational change, and online education has become one of the main ways to popularize education. Schools and training institutions are developing their online teaching gradually, and more and more people are improving their abilities by studying online. Online courses are the supporter of online education; its quality directly affects the quality of online education. Therefore, assuring the quality of online courses'instructional design is a very important mission for online education. For many educators, the online courses'instructional design is a new thing which is difficult to be grasped. Therefore there is an urgent need of a systemic solution to the instructional design of online courses. The United States is one of the countries which have started online education relatively early in the world. We can learn something from the research on the instructional design of American online courses for the development of our country's online courses'instructional design. This research studied the American online courses'instructional design by literature and case method, with the hope that this study could contribute to the development of the online courses'instructional design for our country.The main body is divided into six parts:The first part is the introduction to explain the background of the research, current situation of domestic and international researches, the purpose of the research, content and approaches of the research.The second part is the descriptions of online course instructional design's related concepts. Firstly, this part discussed the conceptions of course and online course based on the opinions of scholars at home and abroad: course should be the process that learners gain knowledge and experiences within the teaching and learning environment designed by teachers according to the objectives; online course is the process which learners gain knowledge and experiences within the teaching and learning environment designed by the teachers according to the objectives in the online environment. It includes the content of teaching and learning organized according to the teaching and learning goals and strategies, software tools which support online teaching and learning, learning resources, learning activities implemented in the online environment and the teachers and learners. Then this part discussed the conception of instructional design: instructional design is the process to create the environment which is learner-centered and includes meaningful learning activities according to the teaching and learning theory. At last this part summarized the differences between online course instructional design and traditional instructional design. Online course instructional design is based on the traditional instructional design, but the status of the learners are more complex, so the focus of online course instructional design must change from teaching to learning, the teachers'role changes from the transmitters of knowledge to the directors, helpers and facilitators for learning, and online course environment changes from teaching environment to learning environment.The third part is the research of basic theories of American online courses'instructional design. The distance education theories and learning theories are the basic theories of American online courses'instructional design, this part mainly discussed the main ideas of Independence and Autonomy theory, Transactional and Interaction theory, Equalization Theory, and social constructivism learning theory and the theory of brain-based education.The fourth part is the research of the strategies and models of American online courses'instructional design. The online course instructional design models are changing from the first generation instructional design model which is linear to the second generation which is non-linear and focuses on the performance of learners in real life. This part discussed the development of American online courses'instructional design models, and mainly studied six typical online course design models , they are Dicker-Kelly model, ASSURE model, Goal-Based Scenario, Personalized System of Instruction, Person-centered online study instructional design model and Brain-based instructional design model. In the broad framework of instructional design, it needs relevant strategies to design the micro-teaching activities and solve more specific problems of teaching. This research mainly studies the"excellent practice principles"of online course instructional design, the strategies for the design of online discussion and strategies to increase online course retention. At the same time, the instructional design of TfU online course of Harvard is studied as a case focusing on the analysis of classroom discussion and the teaching and learning activities'design.The fifth part summarized the features of the American online courses'instructional design based on the whole research, the features are: meets the learner's individual need, cultivates the learners'ability to solve practical problems, interactive teaching and learning activities, the strict system of management and implementation. Through the analysis of the American online courses'instructional design and combined with the actual situation of Chinese education, this part brought up four suggestions for helping the building of our country's online courses: to strengthen the study on the online course instructional design theory, reinforcing the design of online courses'teaching and learning's interactive, taking an scientific and objective attitude to building online courses ,to enhance the management and implementation on teaching and learning in online courses.The sixth part reviewed the whole study and pointed out the shortcomings in the research and the future direction of the research.