Content area
Abstract
Research on how the principles of instructional design are taught in faculty training courses for online teaching and how faculty members incorporate these principles into their online courses is limited. This gap in the research literature is especially pronounced when considering the relatively new online learning context of Puerto Rico‘s higher education system. This sequential explanatory study explored two related phenomenon at three Puerto Rican higher education institutions: (a) how instructional design principles were integrated into the institutions‘ faculty training courses for course design and online teaching and (b) how the institutions‘ faculty members applied instructional design principles to their online courses. Study findings showed that the key instructional design principles were regularly applied by online instructors at the three study sites and that most faculty training materials integrated the key elements of instructional design. Future research should investigate whether Puerto Rican higher education institutions require faculty members to receive training in instructional design and online course development prior to teaching their first online courses. Furthermore, the field of instructional design could benefit from future studies that compare and contrast online faculty training courses across institutions in order to benchmark best practices. Lastly, further research should be conducted to determine the relationship between faculty training to design and teach online courses and faculty members‘ application of the instructional design principles to their actual course room practices. This study‘s qualitative findings related to faculty training programs (research question 2) were consistent with the quantitative findings related to faculty members‘ application of instructional design principles to their online courses (research question 1).
