Abstract:

Online courses have become a major format of course delivery during the Covid-19 pandemic and will continue to be an essential component of post-pandemic education (Murphy, 2020; Susilawati & Supriyatno, 2020). A number of instructional design (ID) models, such as ADDIE model, Merrill’s Principles of Instruction (MPI, Merrill, 2002), Gagné’s Nine Events of Instruction (Gagné et al., 1992), and Bloom’s Taxonomy (Bloom, 1956), have been widely used in developing online courses in various disciplines and programs. While previous research has examined great examples of how ID models can be applied to the design of online courses (e.g., Duffy & Cunningham, 1996; Morrison, 2003), most of these examples have been courses that are delivered during regular semesters, and there is a lack of guiding principles for the design of intensive online courses (Chen, 2007).

Intensive online courses are usually much shorter than regular semester courses. However, as Chen (2007) indicates, they are not simply “a condensed version” of regular semester courses that can be designed by “compressing the course content and extending the study hours” (p. 72). In fact, the decreased time for course delivery as well as the increased workload for online learning (Cavanaugh, 2005) make intensive online courses much more challenging for students. Therefore, it is imperative to explore effective instructional strategies to design such courses and facilitate students’ meaningful learning.

This study presents how a cognitive scaffolding approach that integrated the cognitive scaffolding framework (Hannafin et al., 1999) and MPI (Merrill, 2002) was used in the design of a 3-week-long intensive online TESL certificate course at a Canadian university. The essential principles of MPI (i.e., Task, Activation, Demonstration, Application and Integration) as well as the four types of cognitive scaffolds (i.e., conceptual scaffolds, metacognitive scaffolds, procedural scaffolds and strategic scaffolds) were applied to the course design and delivery. This presentation intends to analyze the course design and report students’ experience of taking the course. The findings of this research will provide practical implications for the instructional design of intensive online courses during and post the pandemic.

Keywords:

Instructional design, intensive online courses, cognitive scaffolding, MPI, pandemic.