Designing and Developing an E-Learning Course

Running head: E-LEARNING COURSE 1

E-LEARNING COURSE 5

Designing and Developing an E-Learning Course

Instructor: Dr. Manuel Johnican

Cheanel Nolden

November 25, 2018

Designing and Developing an E-Learning Course

Course Description and Goals

The proposed name of the course is Virtual Team Communication (Course ID is VCOM 101). This course is aimed at providing learners with insights into how best they can communicate, coordinate, and collaborate within online environments. The course has been developed after deliberations on how both groups and organizations are increasingly using virtual teams that are made up of workgroup members who communicate and collaborate with technology to complete their tasks. Virtual teams are often geographically distributed. As such, they communicate through computer-mediated communication systems. Therefore, they may never or rarely physically meet face-to-face. Considering the above, creating relational links among team members can be an important step towards improving effectiveness of information sharing via computer-mediated ethnologies. In most situations, team members often receive little or insignificant training to enhance the efficacy of this kind of communication. Therefore, when training is utilized, it normally emphasizes on software use skills as opposed to interpersonal communication dynamics.

The tremendous advancements in the internet and telecommunication technologies, coupled with globalization of companies have resulted in the increase in number of individuals who operate in virtual environments and teams within and across organizations. Virtual teams can be described as groups of people who are involved in a common task or objective and communicating through electronic means. Such online channels may include electronic mails, web-based communication, as well as video conferencing. Thus, virtual teams are regarded as forms of network organizations. Thus, virtual team processes are enabled through communication and information technologies.

Goals

Virtual team members are comprised of people from different cultural and religious backgrounds. Since they have ideological differences and worldviews, it is important that parties engaged in virtual communication gain situational awareness of their communication environments to avoid miscommunication. In light of the above, below are the goals of his course.

1. To improve coordination and collaboration among virtual team members

2. To improve interpersonal and social skills of virtual team members.

3. To improve cross-cultural competence of virtual team members.

Instructional and Supplemental Materials

Instructional Material

Textbooks are the main instructional materials that will be utilized for this course. In particular, Kurtzberg’s (2014) book titled Communication and Collaboration in the Digital World will extensively be used. This learning material is important since it helps learners to avert communication problems that they encounter daily in the virtual world. For instance, it recognizes that communication challenges are often subtle and have the potential to cause complications even without individuals being consciously aware of them. In most situations, people often think that they are better placed to understand the messages that they get. This is also reflected by the fact that they believe they may write or talk more clearly than they really do in messages that they send or receive. Therefore, learning about the online dynamics of team communication can enable one to improve interpersonal and collaborative skills.

Supplemental Materials

The three supplemental materials will include two journal articles and one video content on virtual team communication. These two journal articles include Creating Value through Virtual Teams by Chatfield et al. (2014) and Communication in Virtual Teams by Marlow, Lacerenza and Salas (2017). The article authored by Chatfield et al. (2014) explores the major transformations that the virtual world has undergone in terms of communication. In particular, they are increasingly embracing information technology infrastructures for the timely information sharing. This learning material provides strategies for effective communication and information sharing in corporate contexts to promote team satisfaction.

Chatfield et al. (2014) provide an understanding on how organizations and individuals can leveret virtual team communication to establish business value. Lacerenza and Salas (2017). also offer a valuable learning material that sheds light on how virtual communication can improve team performance. This supplemental material is also important since it identifies elements that make up a virtual communication system. Further, it explores the ove5rarhing framework of the communication procedure with the accompanying study propositions that are valuable in informing future studies and the practice of virtual teams. Finally, video contents will be used to enrich students’ knowledge of the virtual team owing to their presentational characteristics. The ability of video contents to provide resources to home-based learners that could not be possible through other channels, or direct experience makes it important for learning purposes in this course.

Three Learning Outcomes for the First Three Weeks

The three learning outcomes of the first three weeks include: improving learners’ technical skills, improving learners’ cross-cultural competency, as well as enhancement of people skills. Technical skills will be the first learning outcome of this course. In particular, learners will be enlightened on basic ICT literacy skills that are required to operate computerized devices. Technical skills are needed to overcome the problem of low participation in group communication within the virtual environment. Cultural competency training will primarily focus on providing learners with an overview of different cultural environments and how to reach out to team members from different cultures without miscommunications and disagreements. Further, team members will be trained to develop people skills that can allow them to interact well with different types of people. This will include emotional intelligence and the ability to develop effective words that appeal to different target audiences.

Recommendations: Instructional Strategies

There are various instructional strategies that will be used for the successful implementation of this learning program. They include: interactive PowerPoint presentation, group discussions, as well as audio and video files. Interactive PowerPoint presentations will work by enabling students to view such presentations before participating in online discussions with their respective assigned groups (Cuthrell & Lyon, 2008). In this respect, group and individual response papers will require to be submitted. In group discussions, the trainees will be required to read and respond to text contents using self-selected subgroups. Finally, audio and video files will work by encouraging students to watch and listen to audiovisual lectures and engage in discussions on the contents provided to the groups (Cuthrell & Lyon, 2008). These audiovisual files will summarize the groups’ discussions that will be submitted.

Other instructional strategies that will be explored include: reading and responding and reading and teaching. Under the read and teach strategy, students will be required to read their assigned texts and provide individual responses to questions at the end of each chapter (Cuthrell & Lyon, 2008). These responses are then read by other students in the group to share ideas and knowledge. On the other hand, the read and teach strategy will requires students to read their groups’ assigned tasks and texts and create group video contents or digital photography projects that demonstrate the contents of the assigned texts.

There are various reasons why these instructional strategies have been selected for the delivery of the course contents. Not all students respond positively to one style of providing instructions (Cuthrell & Lyon, 2008). For instance, some are inclined towards independent delivery preferences, while others prefer group models of receiving instructions. Usually, the independent preferences often include strategies such as PowerPoint presentations and read and respond models of delivery. Student responses often indicate a shared degree of comforts with such strategies of independent instructions. The strategies enable a student to examine at own pace the learning materials in order to increase their levels of interpretation and understanding. However, while the benefits of independent learning cannot be overlooked, they have various demerits. For instance, some students may regard such training models as boring and deprived of vibrancy (Cuthrell & Lyon, 2008). Therefore, there is need to utilize interactive approaches that enable students to remain steadfast in preferring models that are convenient, comfortable, and enable control over a person’s grade, is essentially passive modes of institution.

Group strategies are effective in cases where independent strategies are viewed as boring o lacking dynamism by other members. For instance, they offer better ways of learning new materials, especially when dealing with overload of information. In such cases, it can help by listening to others’ voices and increasing understanding of what is in the bulky learning materials. Many students often consider such modules as the most appropriate for meeting their learning needs because they regard themselves as contributing members of the groups. For instance, some students often like collaborative projects because they give them insights into how they can create their own strategies for learning. Further, technological preferences are welcomed by many group members. These include audios, videos, and interactive presentation files.

Weekly Learning Schedule

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
Week One Outcome: Improve Learners’ Technical Skills	Introduction to Computers	Web Communication	Email Communication	Basics of Video Communication	Basics of Social Media Communication	Information Security
Week Two Outcome: Improved cross-cultural competency	Communicating in multicultural teams	Understanding people’s worldviews in online environments	Resolving conflicts in the digital world	Understanding cultural barriers to communication	Common stereotypes in online communication
Week Three Outcome: Improving learners’ people skills	Introduction to emotional intelligence	Understanding non-verbal communication	Basics of interpersonal communication	Fostering team collaboration	Improving group cohesion in the digital space

Weekly Discussion Questions

Week One

1. Discuss the essential elements of a telecommuting system.

2. How can social media be used to support virtual communication?

Week Two

1. Discuss some of the cultural barriers to effective virtual team communication

2. How do we overcome these barriers?

Week Three

1. Define emotional intelligence

2. How can team collaboration and cohesion be improved in the virtual world?

References

Chatfield, A., Najem Shlemoon, V., Redublado, W., & Darbyshire, G. (2013). Creating value

through virtual teams: a current literature review. Australasian Journal of Information

Systems, 18.

Cuthrell, K., & Lyon, A. (2008). Instructional strategies: What do online students

prefer. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 3(4), 357-362.

Kurtzberg, T. R. (2014). Virtual teams: Mastering communication and collaboration in the

digital age. New York: ABC-CLIO.

Marlow, S. L., Lacerenza, C. N., & Salas, E. (2017). Communication in virtual teams: A

conceptual framework and research agenda. Human Resource Management

Review, 27(4), 575-589.