Theory and Practice
of Online Learning
V I E W I N G O P T I O N S
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Toll free in Canada/U.S.
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@
athabascau.ca
www.athabascau.ca
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Text: Sabon
Numerals: Hoefler Text
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ISBN: 0-919737-59-5
Editors:
Terry Anderson &
Fathi Elloumi
cde.athabascau.ca/online_book
Athabasca University
Theory and Practice
of Online Learning
CONTENTS
Contributing Authors / i
Foreword / ix
Dominique Abrioux
Introduction / xiii
Terry Anderson & Fathi Elloumi

9 Copyright Issues in Online Courses:
A Moment in Time / 241
Lori-Ann Claerhout
10 Value Added—The Editor in Design and
Development of Online Courses / 259
Jan Thiessen & Vince Ambrock
11 Teaching in an Online Learning
Context / 271
Terry Anderson
12 Call Centers in Distance Education / 295
Andrew Woudstra, Colleen Huber,
& Kerri Michalczuk
13 Supporting Asynchronous Discussions
among Online Learners / 319
Joram Ngwenya, David Annand
& Eric Wang
14 Library Support for Online
Learners: e-Resources, e-Services,
and the Human Factors / 349
Kay Johnson, Houda Trabelsi, & Tony Tin
15 Supporting the Online Learner / 367
Judith A. Hughes
16 The Quality Dilemma in Online
Education / 385
Nancy K. Parker
Part 4 – Delivery,
Quality Control, and
Student Support of
Online Courses
Part 3 – Design and

Calgary, Alberta, with a special interest in the design, development,
usability, and usage of multimedia in computer-mediated communi-
cations. He was, until 2002, employed as an instructional designer
at Athabasca University. Mr. Caplan recently designed and oversaw
development of a Web-based course helping older adults learn to
use the Internet.
i
Lori-Ann Claerhout (loriannc
@
athabascau.ca.), is Copyright
Officer in Educational Media Development at Athabasca University.
She holds a Bachelor of Arts (English) degree from the University of
Calgary, and is currently working toward a Master of Arts
(Humanities Computing and English) degree from the University of
Alberta. Lori-Ann has been active in organizing other copyright
professionals from western and central Canada.
Alan Davis, Ph.D., was Vice-President, Academic, at Athabasca
University from 1996 to 2003, and before that he directed programs
at the
BC Open University. His original discipline was Chemistry,
and he received his doctorate from Simon Fraser University in 1980.
He has special interests learning assessment and accreditation, the
management of e-learning, and virtual university consortia. Dr.
Davis is now Vice-President, Academic, at Niagra College.
Fathi Elloumi, Ph.D. (fathie
@
athabascau.ca), is an associate
professor of Managerial Accounting at Athabasca University. His
research focuses on corporate governance, and covers all aspects of
effective governance practices. He is also interested in the strategic

online and technology-based training, and interaction analysis in
online conferencing.
Colleen Huber has worked at Athabasca University since 1994,
when she was the first facilitator in the Call Centre. Since then, she
has moved to the position of Learning Systems Manager where she
is responsible for the systems used to deliver courses and manage
information within the School of Business at Athabasca University.
Now that these systems are available, Colleen spends a great deal of
time presenting them to the Athabasca University community and
running workshops to train staff on their use, as well as presenting
papers and workshops to other educational communities.
Dr. Judith Hughes, Ph.D. (judithh
@
athabascau.ca), Vice-President,
Academic, first came to Athabasca University in 1985, when the
University was moved from Edmonton, Alberta, to the town of
Athabasca, 120 km north of Edmonton. Judith’s history is rooted
in adult education, in teaching and research, as well as
administrative positions. She has lived in a variety of places in
Canada, having completed her bachelor’s degree at Carleton
University (Ottawa), her master’s degree at Queen’s University
(Kingston), and her Ph.D. at University of Alberta (Emonton).
At Athabasca University, Dr. Hughes oversees all graduate and
undergraduate academic units within the University, including
academic centres, library, educational media development,
counseling and advising, and other student support units. She
previously served as Vice-President, Students Services, at Athabasca
University for seven years, overseeing the development of student
support resources on the Web.
Dr. Hughes also served as Vice-President, External Relations for

Innovative Management Web site.
Kay Johnson (kayj
@
athabascau.ca), is Head, Reference and
Circulation Services at the Athabasca University Library. Kay
received her Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in History from University
of Ottawa and her Master of Library and Information Studies from
McGill University. In addition to providing reference and
instructional services to Athabasca University learners, she has
been actively involved in the development of the digital library at
Athabasca University, and serves as a consultant for the Digital
Reading Room project.
Kerri Michalczuk has been with Athabasca University since 1984.
For the last five years, as Course Production and Delivery Manager,
she has managed the day-to-day operation of the School of Business
iv
tutorial Call Centre—the first point of contact for students registered
in business courses. Kerri also manages the production processes for
developing online and print-based materials, including coordinating
the work of production staff, such as editors, instructional designers,
typesetters, and copyright personnel. Kerri has extensive knowledge
of Athabasca University’s administrative and production systems,
and she sits on many committees that review, plan, and implement
University systems.
Joram Ngwenya, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of Management
Information Systems as Athabasca University. His research interests
include e-learning systems, e-government systems, and group
decision support systems.
Nancy Parker, Ph.D. (nancyp
@

research interests include organizational change, project manage-
ment, team building and leadership, complexity theory in relation
to organizations, the professionalization of knowledge workers,
and the impact of codification of knowledge on performance.
Ultimately all of her research is aimed at improving the practice of
project management in organizations. For more information
regarding Janice’s work or background check the Athabasca
University, Centre for Innovative Management Web site.
Tony Tin (tonyt
@
athabascau.ca) is the Electronic Resources
Librarian at Athabasca University Library. Tony holds a B.A. and
M.A. in History from McGill University and a B.Ed. and M.L.S.
from the University of Alberta. He maintains the Athabasca
University Library’s Web site and online resources, and is the
Digital Reading Room project leader.
Houda Trabelsi (houdat
@
athabascau.ca) is an e-Commerce course
coordinator at Athabasca University. She received a M.Sc. in
business administration from Sherbrooke University and a M.Sc. in
information technology from Moncton University. Her research
interests include electronic commerce, business models, e-learning
strategy, customer relationships management, trust and privacy in
electronic commerce, World Wide Web navigation, and interface
design.
Zengxiang (Eric) Wang, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of finance
at Athabasca University. His research interests are option pricing,
executive compensation, corporate tax planning, and online
financial education.

world that had hitherto enabled distance education undergoing
radical and rapid change, but so too was the University’s political
environment, as debt reduction and elimination became the rallying
cries of provincial public policy. Moreover, Athabasca University,
Alberta’s fourth public university, had under-performed during the
ten previous years, as evidenced by the fact that in 1994-1995 it
suffered from the highest government grant per full-load-equivalent
student, the highest tuition fee level amongst the province’s public
universities, and a dismally low graduation rate. Concerned with
this state of affairs, the Government of Alberta announced that it
would reduce Athabasca University’s base budget by 31 per cent
over three years (ten per cent more than the reduction applied to
the other universities), and that it expected significant increases in
enrolment and cost effectiveness.
Today, this institution has risen to the challenge and serves some
30,000 students per year (a threefold increase over 1995), has more
than tripled its graduation rate, commands the lowest tuition fees
and per full-load-equivalent student base grant in the province,
and, most importantly, enjoys the highest ratings among sister
institutions in the biannual, provincially administered learner satis-
faction surveys of university graduates.
Several complementary factors have combined to bring about
this dramatic change in Athabasca University’s institutional
performance, but none is more important than the move towards
the online delivery of its programs and courses. The direction had
been prepared for in the early 1990s as Athabasca University
ix
1
A complete case study
of Athabasca University is

members integral to the implementation of this strategic vision,
presents individual practitioners’ views of the principal pedagogical
and course management opportunities and challenges raised by the
move to an online environment. Although grounded in a discussion
of online learning theory (itself presented and developed by
academics who are engaged daily in developing and delivering
electronic courses), it does not seek to be either a complete guide to
online course development and delivery, or an all-inclusive account
of how they are practiced at Athabasca University. Rather, each
chapter synthesizes, from a practitioner view, one component piece
of a complex system.
One of the main advantages of digital content is the ease with
which it can be adapted and customized. Nowhere is this more true
x
Theory and Practice of Online Learning
2
(1996, January). Strategic
University Plan (pp. 5-6).
Retrieved January 19,
2004, from http://www
.athabascau.ca/html/info/
sup/sup.htm
than in its application to online education in general, and at
Athabasca University in particular, where three complementary
values characterize the organization’s different approaches to how
work is organized and how learning paths for students are
facilitated: customization, openness, and flexibility.
Consequently, and notwithstanding the inevitable standard-
ization around such key issues as quality control, copyright,
materials production, library, and non-academic support services

accomplished and recognize the particular contribution that this
book’s authors are making to the global extension of our mission.
xi
Foreword
xii
Theory and Practice of Online Learning
INTRODUCTION
Terry Anderson & Fathi Elloumi
The Online Learning Series is a collection of works by practitioners
and scholars actively working in the field of distance education.
The text has been written at a time when the field is undergoing
fundamental change. Although not an old discipline by academic
standards, distance education practice and theory has evolved
through five generations in its 150 years of existence (Taylor,
2001). For most of this time, distance education was an individual
pursuit defined by infrequent postal communication between
student and teacher. The last half of the twentieth century wit-
nessed rapid developments and the emergence of three additional
generations, one supported by the mass media of television and
radio, another by the synchronous tools of video and audio tele-
conferencing, and yet another based on computer conferencing.
The first part of the twenty-first century has produced the first
visions of a fifth generation—based on autonomous agents and
intelligent, database-assisted learning—that we refer to as the
educational Semantic Web. Note that each of these generations has
followed more quickly upon its predecessor than the previous ones.
Moreover, none of these generations has completely displaced
previous ones, so that we are left with diverse yet viable systems of
distance education that use all five generations in combination.
Thus, the field can accurately be described as complex, diverse, and

of their authors.
In sum, the book is neither an academic tome, nor a prescriptive
“how to” guide. Like a university itself, the book represents a
blending of scholarship and of research, practical attention to the
details of teaching and of provision for learning opportunity,
dissemination of research results, and mindful attention to the
economics of the business of education.
In many ways the chapters represent the best of what makes for
a university community. The word “university” comes from the
Latin universitas (totality or wholeness), which itself contains two
simpler roots, unus (one or singular) and versere (to turn). Thus, a
university reflects a singleness or sense of all encompassing whole-
ness, implying a study of all that is relevant and an acceptance of
all types of pursuit of knowledge. The word also retains the sense
of evolution and growth implied by the action embedded in the
verb “to turn.” As we enter the twenty-first century, the world is in
the midst of a great turning as we adopt and adapt to the techno-
logical capabilities that allow information and communication to
be distributed anywhere/anytime.
The ubiquity and multiplicity of human and agent communi-
cation, coupled with tremendous increases in information
production and retrieval, are the most compelling characteristics of
the Net-based culture and economy in which we now function. The
famous quote from Oracle Corporation, “The Net changes
xiv
Theory and Practice of Online Learning
everything,” applies directly to the formal provision of education.
Institutions that formerly relied on students gathering in campus-
based classrooms are suddenly able (and many seem eager) to offer
their programming on the Internet. Similarly, institutions

xv
Introduction
As you will see from the quotations and references that augment
the text in most chapters, we have learned much from the works of
others, and thus feel bound to return this gift of knowledge to the
wider community.
Second, we believe that education is one of the few sustainable
means to equip humans around the globe with the skills and
resources to confront the challenges of ignorance, poverty, war, and
environmental degradation. Distance education is perhaps the most
powerful means of extending this resource and making it accessible
to all. Thus, we contribute to the elimination of human suffering by
making as freely available as we can the knowledge that we have
gained developing distance education alternatives.
Third, the Creative Commons license provides our book as a
form of “gift culture.” Gift giving has been a component of many
cultures; witness, for example, the famed Potlatch ceremonies of
Canadian West Coast First Nations peoples. More recently, gift
giving has been a major motivation of hackers developing many of
the most widely used products on the Internet (Raymond, 2001).
Distributing this text as an open source gift serves many of the
same functions gift giving has done through millennia. The gift
weaves bonds within our community and empowers those who
benefit from it to create new knowledge that they can then share
with others and with ourselves. Interestingly, new recent research
on neuro-economics is showing that freely giving and sharing is a
behavior that has had important survival functions for humans
groups since earliest times (Grimes, 2003). David Bollier (2002)
argues that gift cultures are surprisingly resilient and effective at
creating and distributing goods, while protecting both long-term

high because the stakes are so low.” Open source licensing allows
us to go beyond financial arguments that are likely to have little
consequence in any case.
Finally, we hope that open sourcing this book will allow it be
more widely distributed and read. Through this dissemination, the
ideas proposed will be exposed to critical dialogue and reflection.
We hope that much of this commentary will make its way back to
the authors or flow into the discussion forums associated with the
text’s Web site. Through review within the community of practice,
ideas are honed, developed, and sometimes even refuted. Such
discourse not only improves the field as a whole, but also directly
benefits our work at Athabasca University, and thus handsomely
repays our efforts.
In summary, we license the use of this book to all—not so much
with a sense of naïve idealism, but with a realism that has been
developed through our life work—to increase access to and oppor-
tunity for all to quality learning opportunities.
xvii
Introduction
Book Organization and Introduction to the Chapters
In the following pages, we briefly review the main themes covered
in this book and its chapters. We used the value chain of online
learning framework to help organize our themes and chapters. The
value chain framework is an approach for breaking down the
sequence (chain) of an organization’s functions into the strate-
gically relevant activities through which utility is added to its
offerings and services. The components of an online learning or-
ganization’s value chain are depicted in the following figure.
Inbound logistics involves preparations for course development,
including curriculum planning and related activities. Operations

collaborations,
and marketing
Operations
learning value chain in Parts 2-4. Part 2 deals with inbound
logistics, Part 3 with production and with aspects of outbound
logistics, and Part 4 with delivery, marketing, and service to
learners. The following figure illustrates the organization of this
volume.
“Part 1: Role and Function of Theory in Online Education
Development and Delivery” provides the theoretical foundations
for this volume. Chapter 1 presents the foundation of education
theory for online learning. It opens the debate by discussing the
contributions of behaviorist, cognitivist, and constructivist theories
to the design of online materials, noting that behaviorist strategies
can be used to teach the facts (what), cognitivist strategies the
principles and processes (how), and constructivist strategies the
real-life and personal applications and contextual learning. The
chapter mentions a shift toward constructive learning, in which
learners are given the opportunity to construct their own meaning
from the information presented during online sessions. Learning
objects will be used to promote flexibility and reuse of online
xix
Introduction
Inbound
logistics
Outbound
logistics
Service
Delivery,
collaborations,