Guidelines and Standards for the Development of Fully Online Learning Objects

The transition from face to face learning to the delivery of instruction through re-usable online learning objects has been shown by Salas and Ellis (2006) to be not only effective but have benefits to students, instructors, and administrators. Course websites are learning objects that when used in conjunction with sound pedagogy, learning outcomes, and content can support traditional, authentic, and alternative learning and assessment protocols (Bennett, 2002). The adoption of standards and guidelines for the design and evaluation of learning objects is an important means of quality assurance (Friesen, 2005; Krauss & Ally, 2005; Valarmis & Apostolakis, 2006) that supports the communication of meaningful feedback to instructional designers for product improvement (Krauss & Ally, 2005). In order to ensure that learning objects that support fully online instruction are well developed, a set of standards has been developed by the Office of Instructional Technology at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore that are supported by an evaluation rubric. The goal of this paper is to encourage the establishment of guidelines and a method for evaluating e-learning quality by providing a model that can be adapted and adopted by interested institutions.