As you teach a course, you should keep track of learners’ problems with certain assignments or tools. If you spend a lot of time each term explaining instructions or interpreting a source, those materials should be updated. When you have taught a course several times, it becomes apparent quickly if some materials are difficult to understand or tools frequently work improperly. A few learners may not understand an assignment or may have trouble getting something to work at the course site. When several students have similar problems, or if you receive feedback from site users about problems with certain areas, especially across course sections, the materials or tools need to be changed.

In a similar way, course designers or administrators should keep track of teachers’ and learners’ problems in using a course site. Administrators or designers can use formal and informal ways to solicit feedback about the amount of work required during a course, site access problems, lack of available software, difficulty in working with tools, or relevance of course content.

For example, user surveys sent to a sample of learners and teachers across the curriculum may provide non-course-specific feedback about the quality, relevance, and usability of materials and technology. Informally (voluntarily), learners and teachers may be requested to submit ideas for improving technology. They may help select courseware, for example, that allows them to create their online course materials. All these collaborative decisions need to be made before hardware, software, or site upgrades take place.

Course evaluations are another way to gauge the effectiveness of course materials. If a few learners complain about an assignment, you can check to see if the assignment, the student, the time frame, or competing distractions from other classes, work, family, and so on caused the problem. Again, if lots of learners submit the same complaint, it may be time to change the assignment. It may be dropped, revised, or moved to a different learning unit where it fits more logically.

You, or your institution, should periodically update courses or individual modules, even if everything seems to be running smoothly. Changing course content or tools every term is probably too often. If students have to learn a completely new way to access course information, or if a design is radically changed each term, they probably will become frustrated. As well, if changes require learners frequently to upgrade their hardware or software, they may not be able to afford the cost, or they may not have the time to learn to use new programs or equipment. Course changes that involve a dramatic overhaul of the learner’s computer system should be announced well in advance of the change. Minor changes and smaller improvements in technology should be explained, too, but they probably will not require you to warn learners about new technology requirements for their home or office computers.

Technical and design changes should be made incrementally, so that learners and teachers can easily transfer what they know about the old site design to the new. No one should have to spend a great deal of time figuring out how to find new information or perform common tasks.

As well, the technology used in online courses must be updated as new software, courseware, and multimedia applications become common in the home and office. Technical specialists, working with administrators, course designers, and teachers, must figure out how often software, for example, must be updated and which versions that the institution will support. Not all learners, or their employers, have the latest hardware and software, and some students may have low-level Internet connections. Online courses have to be kept current technically, but they also have to appeal to their target market and remain accessible to the majority of learners.

As you upgrade the technology, remember that international students may not have the same level of technology or Internet accessibility. Not only European students, but those in other parts of the globe, can find that Internet charges limit their ability to work online for long periods of time. Some students may have to share computers with many other learners, or the infrastructure may not be in place for widespread Internet use. For example, in countries where the telecommunication infrastructure is not as highly developed as that in the United States, Europe, or Australia, working online requires special funding and personnel. The access is not as simple to gain, because the technical structure and support for the Internet are not yet well developed. These factors mean that international students may not be able to access the level of technology you want to include in your course upgrades, or, if they have to pay for Internet access by the minute, course materials that have long load times will be prohibitive to use. Learners may not have the assistance they need if they have problems getting access to a site. You must balance the need for the latest innovations with a market analysis of your current and potential students’ ability to get and use technical innovations.

Only if the course content must be updated every term to remain effective should materials be changed every time the course is taught. Current events courses, for example, need this type of modification every time they are offered. Most courses’ content changes more slowly, but every course should be evaluated every year, and ideas for updating courses should be solicited or documented each time that the course is taught.

Some institutions implement a rolling schedule of changes, so that some courses are updated or taught for the first time each term. Completely outdated courses, or those not generating learner interest, may be dropped because they no longer meet learners’ needs or are no longer cost effective to offer.

Changes to the curriculum also involve changes to individual courses so that they continue to fit well. Curricular design must be ongoing, so that educational programs remain pedagogically sound and respond to professional expectations of graduates.

Within a two-year cycle, for example, every online course may be reviewed and revamped. During this cycle, new courses are implemented, and other courses dropped. The regular scheduling of updates and implementation ensures that all courses advance, using newer tools, software, and site designs, as well as fresh course materials. Teachers, learners, course designers, technical specialists, and administrators know the schedule and regularly can prepare new courses or update existing ones.

Even if the materials’ shelf life would be good for another year or two, learners expect online courses to be updated often. If any Web site— business, personal, educational—is going to be effective, it must be updated frequently, either to change the content or the design. Otherwise, people will not keep coming back to the site. The information has to seem fresh, and the design must be usable and interesting in order to attract attention. Online courses are the same way. Even if a learner ideally takes a particular class only one time, the information and site design must look fresh and up to date. You fool yourself if you think that online learners do not compare notes about courses and assignments. Learners make friends with their online colleagues and share information about teachers, courses, and assignments, just like they do on a traditional on-site campus. Learners also compare your course site and content with the design and usability of other institutions’ course offerings. To be competitive and to keep up with trends in design and usability, course sites should be updated often.

Developing new course materials can involve at least three processes:

1. Beefing up existing courses with new assignments

If you add assignments, you need to make sure that the total amount of work is still manageable for the number of course hours and level of the subject matter.

2. Achieving a balance between new and old materials so that the overall course provides materials that meet learners’ needs, learning styles, and expectations for an online course

As technology allows more types of interaction, more handson activities, like simulations, may be appropriate. If more in-depth research is needed, particularly so learners can demonstrate that they have done more than reading the assigned materials, a research paper—particularly using Internet sources—may be needed. New links to materials created by others may be available; you may find additional sites that you want learners to visit. Keeping the course content fresh and providing new experiences for learners are good ways to balance new content with older materials.

3. Helping learners develop additional skills or meet specific requirements

Curriculum changes often are the result of new learning objectives or a market demand for new knowledge and skills to supplement current learning objectives. For example, requirements for a professional certification may have become more stringent, and learners need to gain new information or practice additional skills before they can be certified. As a profession or a subject area progresses, the expectations for experts in that field also increase. Learners taking courses to gain expert status therefore need to know the latest information or work with the newest concepts. They may need a new set of skills. Your course must help prepare learners for (re)entry into the workforce, as well as for living effectively as global citizens.

When you have determined that your course fits these or other scenarios for change, you should ask these questions: What kinds of assignments should be added? Should new materials be asynchronous or synchronous? How does each assignment relate to other assignments and help learners meet the course objectives? How is each assignment unique, not more of “the same old stuff”? Your answers provide a starting point for gathering new materials.