How to Design an Active E-Course?

Abstract

Active Learning improves student attitudes and develops thinking and writing skills. It is increasingly recommended as a teaching method to improve learning. In this paper the authors are interested in the transformation of a face-to-face active course into a web-based active course. An instructional design approach based on meta-models for transforming active-based courses into online courses is proposed. This approach provides a detailed description of meta-models and processes of instructional design for active e-courses as well as the main involved actors. In order to evaluate and validate the proposed meta-models a case study has been carried out. It concerned the transformation of an entrepreneurship active course into an online version and its deployment. The proposed instructional design process constitutes the kernel of an authoring tool for the design of an active e-course, which permits to support the instructional designer in the production of active e-courses.