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Online education has become one of the central issues emerging during the health contingency we are experiencing today. In previous articles, we have talked about both academic and cultural resources to keep ourselves busy and learning during quarantine, but in the case of online learning courses, how do we ensure their quality as educational products?
The democratization of content has made it easier for more and better educational contents to arrive in our hands, and the volume of them has also increased. If you want to take courses that have a satisfactory standard, it is essential to be aware of the elements that comprise an excellent course and those that might weaken it. Below we share some guidelines to follow to evaluate the educational value of online courses.
1. Interaction and response time
The first indicator of the quality of an online course is its ability to enable remote communication. In addition to teaching materials and classroom sessions, the online course should have a platform and a teacher or mentor to provide detailed feedback, whether, via email, written messages, voice or video messaging, and even live chat when required.
The response time between teachers and students is key to leveraging technological tools. It is necessary to establish “office hours” for attention to questions and feedback in the same way that would be done in brick-and-mortar educational institutions. For example, the range of time to answer an email about any class-related questions should be hours, not days, to maintain a quick and useful pace for learning.
2. Institutions and teaching materials
When searching for an online course, the first step should be to check the quality and standards of the institution or the platform that offers it. If the university or digital provider has a high level of credibility, one can be more confident that the online courses offered are of quality as well. Once the student decides which institution or platform to choose, he or she should check that the contents are the same as those offered in a face-to-face traditional course and are at the content level of a university or professional degree curriculum.
3. The exclusive advantages of the online model
Online courses provide the flexibility that sets them apart from face-to-face lessons. The platforms that they use enable multiple conversations at the same time on class-related topics and increase the ability to manage and share content. These resources, combined with a creative strategy that enhances the communicative aspects of the class and includes students in the learning process, result in not only a competitive educational product but one that opens up new academic and learning pathways.
4. Online community
In the absence of face-to-face interactions in an online course, extra effort is needed both from teachers and students to create a learning community that facilitates communication, empathy, and willingness to work in teams. Even if a course has all the existing technological resources at hand and excellent teaching material, the educational experience will not be satisfactory if the people involved within the class do not do the work to create a sense of community and cooperation in and out of sessions. One suggestion to encourage the development of an online community is to spend some time to introduce yourself and talk with your classmates about your class-related interests, as well as to promote teamwork and discussion of issues outside of the lessons.
The popularity of online courses has increased considerably as a response to the growing health crisis we are facing today as a way to mitigate the psychological burden of isolation. While it is advisable to seize this opportunity to continue learning, it is also necessary to develop critical sensitivity to the educational products we choose.
What courses will you take during this quarantine period? Do they meet the criteria mentioned in this text? Let us know in the comments section below.
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This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 
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