How to design a virtual classroom: 10 easy steps to follow

There has been a transparent explosion of Web based courses in the past few years. Despite the ever-increasing number of higher education institutions offering online courses, there is still a lot of controversial debates and a strong sense of confusion about how well the concept of Web-based distance learning is being implemented. This paper is an effort to summarize the primary steps towards building and implementing a successful concept of a virtual classroom. The article should help its readers on how to get involved in the assessment, planning, design, implementation, and maintenance of a virtual classroom-in ten easy steps for the reader to follow. The authors of this paper do not claim that by following the steps outlined in this paper will unequivocally lead to an absolute success; however, there are good reasons to believe the opposite is true. In other words, failing to follow these guidelines will almost inevitably lead to poor, incomplete, inadequate, ineffective solutions to Internet-based distance education