Draft design principles for the systematic design and development of online courses in Higher Education

Abstract: This study explored the experiences of lecturers teaching at South African Higher Education Institutions during the COVID-19 pandemic in emergency remote teaching circumstances. Their experiences of moving their face-to-face courses online rapidly have been the focus of this study. This study is a design-based research study following a qualitative research design. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to gather data from the individual lecturers on voluntary basis. These lecturers were chosen for their role in higher education in 2020 and 2021, and they were each from a different university in South Africa. The draft design principles elicited in this study can be tested and refined to design principles that lecturers can apply when rapidly moving their face-to-face courses to online in emergency remote teaching circumstances. Findings indicate that there are six main draft design principles that can be elicited from the literature and interviews, which are based on redesigning content and assessments for online delivery, guiding the students in online learning through the course structure and practice activities, making use of synchronous sessions to gauge student needs, and communication channels between the lecturer and the students. The study contributes to an understanding of how South African higher education institutions can prepare lecturers in designing their courses if similar emergency remote teaching circumstances happen in future. Key words: Emergency remote teaching, Online learning, Course design, Design based research, Design principlesM.Ed. (ICT in Education