Mixed Methods of Scientific Merit Analysis - Essay Example

Faculty-designers need basic skills and competencies in instructional development to develop effective online courses (Batts, Paglairi, Mallet, & McFadden (2010). The specific topic for this research is about identifying basic skills and competencies for faculty-designers responsible for online course development.Faculty designers are often responsible for the creation, development, and management of online classes without formal preparation for performing these tasks (Carliner, & Driscoll, 2009).

This results in a practice where faculty-designers tend to create courses while lacking basic instructional development skills and competencies. This problem is compounded since the professional and scholarly community has not yet identified what those basic instructional design skills and competencies are for faculty designers. Competencies and skills for faculty-designers developing online courses are embedded in instructional design theories related to content expertise, understanding education, and instructional design (Reigeluth, 2012).

These ideas are associated with the conceptualization of how learning theories support adult learning.Spector (2012) suggests that instructional design theory is related to the aspect of “how to sequence material and activities using various strategies to achieve desired or targeted outcomes (p. 96) or the aspects related to “designers themselves and the processes they use” (Richey, & Klein, 2007, p. 3). This goes hand in hand with Type 2 studies which “focus on a given design, development, or evaluation model or process and they often involve constructing and validating unique design models and processes, as well as identifying those conditions that facilitate their successful use,” (Richely, & Klein, 2005, p.3). This type of research mainly emphasizes the study of learning as a result of designing unique instructional interventions.

These processes for sequencing materials and activities are important for faculty-designers to understand and know how to implement for effective online course development.