“Forum: A New Approach for the Production of Educational Content” by Daviault and Coelho

eLearning is developing at an ever increasing rate as universities and colleges recognize its vast potential to reach a deeper and fragmented student pool. For a while, eLearning was touted as the future of education, the goal we should be aiming for to answer the needs of a diversified student population with requirements predicated by the need to constantly learn new things coupled with the realities of daily life.

However, as the rosy glow has faded somewhat, educators, students, and researchers alike, have raised important issues to challenge some of our assumptions as producers of on-line course content. Instructors cite a lack of time and training and concerns over security, students complain of feeling isolated and poorly stimulated by uninspiring content, while researchers question the use of “sacred” concepts such as interactivity and their real impact on the user experience.

As designers and developers of on-line content for a university, we have had to address these issues to produce content that reflects, in the end, more accurately what the ultimate users feel comfortable with, but also reaches the goals set forth by faculty. This forum will focus on some of these issues and the process we went through to come up with possible solutions. We will use as an illustration of our results, an on-line course dedicated to the study of Organized Crime that we are in the process of developing and that proposes some ideas to create more appealing and enriching educational on-line content.