Guide To Online Education

Version 2024.1

This section provides guidance on how to (1) develop a strategy for online physics courses in your department, (2) design courses to serve students and instructional staff, (3) create a community of support for students, and (4) support effective instruction in online courses. This section draws from a rapidly growing body of research about online courses, presenting reasonably well-established results regarding benefits and limitations of online courses, effective and ineffective online instructional designs, and their impact on different student populations. This section focuses primarily on adding online courses as a supplement to your department’s offerings, not on developing an entirely online physics degree program. While this section incorporates many lessons learned from emergency remote instruction, the focus of this section is on designing high-quality courses that are intended to be online, not on emergency remote instruction. Much of the guidance in this section is also applicable to blended courses that offer a mix of online and in-person interaction, but the section does not address blended learning as a separate topic.

This section focuses on guidance specific to online courses, with pointers to other sections for more general advice that applies to all courses. Because many effective practices for in-person courses are just as relevant in an online environment, you can also find relevant guidance on teaching specific courses in the sections on Introductory Courses for STEM Majors, Introductory Courses for Life Sciences Majors, Upper-Level Physics Curriculum, Courses for Non-STEM Majors, Instructional Laboratories and Experimental Skills, and Undergraduate Research. The section on Implementing Research-Based Instructional Practices provides general pedagogical guidance as well as guidance on how to design and assess courses based on

Course-Level Student Learning Outcomes

Statements describing what students should be able to do as a result of completing a particular course. Outcomes emphasize the integration and application of knowledge rather than coverage of material, and are observable, measurable, and demonstrable. They use specific, active verbs (e.g., “solve,” “describe,” and “calculate”) rather than “understand.” Course-level student learning outcomes are often abbreviated as course-level SLOs and are also known as course-level learning goals. Examples include:

  • Solve the Schroedinger equation in one dimension for commonly encountered simple potentials
  • Describe physical situations that correspond to simple potential energy curves
  • Calculate the electric field or potential due to a system of charges using Coulomb’s law

Course-level student learning outcomes are generally specific to the knowledge and skills addressed in individual courses, in contrast to program-level student learning outcomes, which focus on overall program outcomes. For instructional staff, these learning outcomes clarify what the course will deliver and unite course content with course-level assessments. Specifying course-level learning outcomes in individual course syllabi is often a requirement for accreditation of your institution, or of the institution itself. Assessment of course-level student learning outcomes through course assignments or examinations should be aligned with assessment of program-level learning outcomes, when possible. See the section on Implementing Research-Based Instructional Practices for guidance on how to design and assess courses based on program-level and course-level student learning outcomes. For examples, see the PhysPort expert recommendation How do I develop student learning outcomes for physics courses?

, which is also relevant to online courses.

Benefits

Well-designed online learning experiences can offer greater flexibility and access that meets the increasingly diverse learning needs of today’s higher education population and beyond, in particular non-traditional and part-time students and

Disabled People

People who have “a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities, … a history or record of such an impairment, or … [are] perceived by others as having such an impairment.” Definition from the Americans with Disabilities Act. We use identity-first language (disabled people), rather than person-first language (people with disabilities), because there is a movement toward such language within the disability community. However, both kinds of language are common, and different people and groups within the disability community prefer different terms. Advocates of person-first language argue that you should put the person before the diagnosis and avoid using disability to define someone. Advocates of identity-first language argue that disability is an important aspect of their identity and prefer to embrace this identity rather than avoid it. Overview of identity-first versus person-first language

or others with health-related constraints. Effective course design can facilitate research-based teaching in an online setting. Online courses can reach geographically distributed student populations and engage students in novel ways by overcoming the physical constraints and limitations of a traditional classroom. Online instruction can provide greater flexibility and additional teaching opportunities for

Instructional Staff

Faculty, instructors, adjuncts, teaching staff, and others who serve as instructors of record for courses. This term does not include instructional support staff who support the teaching of courses.

, as well as opportunities to employ instructional staff members who are not tied to your institution’s physical location. It can also reduce the strain on campus infrastructure by reducing classroom use. If you are filling a niche that no one else can fill and have the appropriate institutional infrastructure to support economies of scale for technology, marketing, and instructional design, it is possible for online courses to serve as a source of revenue for your department or institution.

The Cycle of Reflection and Action

Effective Practices

Effective Practices

  1. Develop a strategy for online physics courses in your department

  2. Design courses to serve students and instructional staff

  3. Create a community of support for students

  4. Support effective instruction in online courses

Programmatic Assessments

Programmatic Assessments

Standards and certification

  • National Standards for Quality Online Learning (NSQOL): Provides a set of up-to-date openly licensed standards to help evaluate and improve online courses, online teaching, and online programs.
  • Quality Matters: An organization focused on providing quality assurance in online and innovative digital teaching and learning environments. This organization offers peer review services and certification of online courses and programs. The Quality Matters certification focuses on online course design and will ensure that a course follows

    UDL Guidelines

    Guidelines based on the Universal Design for Learning framework for structuring learning environments to remove barriers and ensure that all kinds of learners can access and participate in learning. Website

    and that the materials are organized clearly, following many of the effective practices described here. However, the staff of Quality Matters are not content experts, and will not certify physics specific content, pedagogy, or curriculum.

There are few large research studies that compare the effectiveness of different learning environments for physics courses in a higher education setting. References 1 and 2 provide literature reviews of research on online education and MOOCs, respectively. Reference 3 compares online and in-person instruction in 500,000 courses at community and technical colleges and finds that student performance is worse in online courses, and disproportionately worse for some populations of students than for others. Reference 4 studies factors that support student success in 30 online college classes and finds that student-instructor interaction and student-student interaction are important factors for student learning and satisfaction. References 5 and 6 compare online to in-person physics courses, finding that students who persist in online courses do as well or better than in in-person classes, but that drop rates are extremely high for online courses. Reference 7 compares learning in the introductory laboratory when delivered in a traditional, hands-on environment versus online using a simulation suite and finds no difference in student performance. References 8 and 9 demonstrate positive outcomes of online

CUREs

Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences

s in physics and astronomy. Reference 10 studies the causes and impacts of zoom fatigue and how to mitigate them.

  1. A. Sun and X. Chen, “Online Education and Its Effective Practice: A Research Review,” Journal of Information Technology Education: Research 15, 157–190 (2015).
  2. M. Zhu, A. Sari, and M. M. Lee, “A systematic review of research methods and topics of the empirical MOOC literature (2014–2016),” Internet and Higher Education 37, 31–39 (2018).
  3. D. Xu and S. S. Jaggars, “Performance gaps between online and face-to-face courses: Differences across types of students and academic subject areas,” The Journal of Higher Education 85(5), 633–659, (2014). In a study of 500,000 courses at community and technical colleges, the authors find that males, younger students, Black students, and those with lower grade point averages have larger performance gaps in both online courses and in-person courses.
  4. A. Sher, “Assessing the relationship of student-instructor and student-student interaction to student learning and satisfaction in web-based online learning environment,” Journal of Interactive Online Learning 8(2), 102-120 (2009).
  5. E. K. Faulconer, J. Griffith, B. Wood, S. Acharyya, and D. Roberts, “A comparison of online, video synchronous, and traditional learning modes for an introductory undergraduate physics course,” Journal of Science Education and Technology 27(5), 404-411 (2018). This physics-only study finds that students who persist in an online introductory physics class are more likely to achieve an A than students in in-person or synchronous video classes. However, the authors also find the withdrawal rate from online physics courses is higher than from the other two course formats.
  6. M. Dubson, E. Johnsen, D. Lieberman, J. Olsen, and N. Finkelstein, “Apples vs. Oranges: Comparison of Student Performance in a MOOC vs. a Brick-and-Mortar Course,” Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings (2014).
  7. M. Darrah, R. Humbert, J. Finstein, M. Simon, and J. Hopkins, “Are virtual labs as effective as hands-on labs for undergraduate physics? A comparative study at two major universities,” Journal of Science Education and Technology 23(6), 803-814 (2014).
  8. A. Werth, C. G. West, N. Sulaiman, and H. J. Lewandowski, “Enhancing students’ views of experimental physics through a course-based undergraduate research experience,” Physical Review Physics Education Research 19, 020151 (2023).
  9. H. B. Hewitt, M. N. Simon, C. Mead, S. Grayson, G. L. Beall, R. T. Zellem, K. Tock, and K. A. Pearson, “Development and assessment of a course-based undergraduate research experience for online astronomy majors,” Physical Review Physics Education Research 19, 020156 (2023).
  10. K. M. Shockley, A. S. Gabriel, D. Robertson, C. C. Rosen, N. Chawla, M. L. Ganster, and M.E. Ezerins, “The fatiguing effects of camera use in virtual meetings: A within-person field experiment,” Journal of Applied Psychology, 106(8), 1137–1155 (2021).
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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Nos. 1738311, 1747563, and 1821372. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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