September 1999 — Features
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How to Design a Virtual Classroom 10 Easy Steps to Follow
Sam Hsu, Ph.D.
Oge Marques, Instructor
M. Khalid Hamza, Ph.D.
Bassem Alhalabi, Ph.D.
Center for Distance Education Technologies (CDET)
Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida
Before attempting to describe the steps toward a successful implementation of a virtual classroom, let us start with a few basic and important definitions.
A classroom can be defined as a communication system that makes it possible for a group of people/users to come together to dialogue about something they want to learn, and to look at visuals (pictures, diagrams) and text that might aid them in understanding. The conventional classroom is surrounded by walls that provide protection from outside noise and interference, contributing to a more effective learning process (Tiffin and Rajasingham 1995).
A virtual classroom, on the other hand, is a system that provides the same opportunities for the teaching and learning process, beyond the physical limits of the traditional classroom's walls, thanks to the use of computer communication networks. Due to the ubiquity and popularity of the Internet -- particularly the World Wide Web -- most virtual classroom implementations are Web-based.
Some of the benefits of a Web-based classroom are its geographic, temporal and platform independence, and its simple, familiar and consistent interface. Some of the drawbacks are: limited access to the Internet worldwide; resistance to shift to new and alternative teaching and learning paradigms or methodologies; privacy, security, copyright and related issues; and a lack of uniform quality (McCormack and Jones 1998).
In this article we summarize the process of conceiving, planning, designing, implementing, and maintaining a virtual classroom in ten easy-to-follow steps. The article is aimed at the reader who has a previous understanding of the basics of Web-based education and wants a structured simplified view of the steps that ought to be taken in order to successfully implement a virtual classroom. Also, the authors have created the V-model (Fig. 1) for the convenience of accessing the information in this article to graphically communicate the concept and any needed information.
Step 1
Assess the needs and the necessary conditions to satisfy them.
The main purpose of this step is to assure the existence of a need for the proposed virtual classroom and the basic infrastructure to develop it. Put simply, you assess 'what is,' or the current state of conditions, available system, etc., and 'what ought to be,' or the desired output. By assessing what is and what ought to be, you have assessed the need and figured out a gap to be bridged (Hamza and Alhalabi 1999). Thus, some questions that should be answered at this stage are:
Are there remote students for that course?
This is a simple, though essential, question of economics. Unless there is a minimum number of (remote) students who will benefit from the virtual classroom implementation, the initiative will be seen by the upper management as a waste of time, money and resources.
