From Distance Education to E-Learning: A Multiple Case Study on Instructional Design Problems

Abstract

Distance education, increasingly dubbed online learning and even e-learning, represents an important societal movement, as witnessed by the sudden emergence of a worldwide knowledge industry in which universities play a central role. Many universities, in implementing e-learning, have undertaken a process whereby faculty are being encouraged to move on-campus created knowledge to online-disseminated knowledge. In attempting to do so, a distance education university-inspired model is often implemented which is foreign to traditional university practice. In doing so, numerous design-related problems are encountered by learning technologists, educational developers (United Kingdom), or instructional designers (USA), who assist faculty in this ‘migratory’ process. This study presents findings from a multi-case study dealing with such instructional design-related problems and charts the emergence of a relevant instructional design model for universities developing e-learning.