Web-Based Learning: Design, Implementation, and Evaluation [Paperback]

If you're looking for a textbook or reference resource for developing Web-based instruction that combines practical application with instructional design theory, this book is an excellent choice. First and foremost, the book is designed as a textbook for instructional design students developing Web-based instruction. However, the book is more than that; it is a very useful handbook for practitioners in the field or anyone who has been tasked with developing Web-based instruction. The book is effectively divided into three parts to facilitate its use. Part 1 provides an overview of Web-based learning, learning theory, and instructional design. Part 2 presents the author's design and development model for Web-based instruction. Part 3 covers the implementation and evaluation of Web-based instruction. What I appreciate most about the book and the model presented is its orientation toward concurrent design and rapid prototyping, concurrent design meaning that design, development, and evaluation activities overlap in the realization of the instructional product. This approach can be vital in business settings. Allow me to provide a scenario to illustrate my point. Suppose a company manufactures widgets to install on automobile suspension systems. We'll call the company MNO. MNO delivers some bad widgets to one of its primary customers, and the customer in turn sends them back to be replaced or repaired with a request that MNO correct the process that yielded the bad widgets. After careful investigation, it is found that several of the machinists working that product line are having problems programming the company's newly acquired computer numerical control machines. Management determines that this is a human performance problem best solved by training. However, management can't afford to pull these machinists as a group off the production line to attend classroom training. Web-based instruction seems to be the intervention of choice because it would allow machinists to train individually at a convenient time, on and off campus, thereby minimizing impact to production and getting the training accomplished quickly. Quick is the key word in this scenario. Remember, in this case, an unhappy customer who has stopped ordering widgets is driving the Web-based instruction initiative. Given this situation, what MNO needs is a concurrent design plan (model) that will result in the realization of a Web-based instruction prototype as quickly as possible. Why? Because MNO will probably want to provide objective evidence to its customer ASAP that an intervention is in the works to correct the performance problem. Here's the good part: the theory, tools, methods, and examples provided in Web-based learning: Design, implementation, and evaluation will not only help you solve human performance problems such as this using Web-based instruction, it will help you develop learning solutions for any application appropriate for deployment over the Web.

Are you are a lone practitioner, a trainer who has been tasked with developing a Web-based training application, and have little or no background in the theoretical underpinnings and methods of instructional design? If the answer is yes, this book needs to be in your tool box. It is well written with numerous tables, illustrations, and the authors provide an example Web-based instruction project that runs from start to finish.

This was recommended to me by a fellow eLearning designer and it has some great stuff in it. I would also recommend it if you're looking for one book that covers it all.

This book was required for a class. I am generally sympathetic with academic authors after writing several texts myself. However, this text comes up short on content and features. For example, the publisher suggests the reader go to the accompanying web site for additional resources and helpful links. The site hasn't been updated so many of the links no longer work and there are few figures and tables available. Considering the subject of the book, and the explosion of online learning systems it is amazing that the publisher (Pearson) is selling an over-priced 2006 edition of the book with no additional resources. Come on -- this book could be so much more helpful if the author and publisher had put some real effort in it.