University of Tasmania, Australia

The stages for developing an online educational environment

There are five key stages in delivering a successful unit with an online unit:

Plan

List your educational goals and the needs of your students. Decide on your priorities: given your time and other available resources, what are the areas to focus on?

Design

Decide on the best strategies to achieve your goals and meet the needs of your students. Consider the resources that are available to you and then draft a plan.

Develop

Develop your design using the available resources (such as staff, hardware, and software). In this stage the teaching/learning materials (for example, text, images, audio, and video) are prepared, and the environment constructed.

At this stage, the online educational environment is also tested before being made available to students.

Deliver

Provide your students with adequate preparation and deliver your educational materials.

Evaluate

Evaluate the outcomes of your project. How effective were the materials in meeting your educational goals? Were the needs of your students met?

To evaluate your materials, you may perform a survey of students, and/or a study of student performance, and/or a study of usage patterns.

On the basis of your evaluation, you can then decide on any design changes to be made for the next use of the materials.