DICE and standards

Conclusion

7 Principles of Good Practice

The principles behind good educational practices has been identified in numerous studies about education research. Studies summarizing effective theories of learning have gone back several decades \cite{Posner_1982} and underpin how we construct understanding of effective education practices.
One great example is from Chickering & Gamson (1987) \cite{chickering1987seven}, which highlights 7 principles of good practice in undergraduate classes. They argue that the most effective undergraduate classes include the following principals:
While these principals were designed around undergraduate courses, many of these principals are accepted as good practice across all age-levels, including K-12 (NGSS, 2012). However, it is important to note that these have been designed with traditional, in-person courses in mind.
To build on this work, Graham et al. (2000) reviewed four university distance education courses, mapping Chickering & Gamson’s (1987) principles of good practice against what was observed in these online courses. They argue that these 7 principles can and should also be applied in online courses. By way of the technology hat was available at the time, these courses were generally taught asynchronously, so while each principle exists in distance education courses, their manifestation will be different. This means that, when done appropriately, both in-person and online courses are equally effective. This has been confirmed through a review of literature comparing traditional with distance education courses by Bernard et al. (2004). One of their main conclusions was that in-person and online courses provide different opportunities and experiences that can be harnessed to maximize student learning, particularly where synchronous and asynchronous instruction is involved.
With the advancement of technology, versions of online education and instruction has become much more accessible and is explored in all areas of education: from pre-k to adult learning, from public to private school, and from formal to informal education. It is reasonable to expect that one could find opportunity for online education in just about any facet of life, but the quality of online education can vary widely. There are many examples of online courses that are essentially a repository of information that the student has to work their way through independently- some are even lacking any form of assessment (i.e., some online “master classes”). Conversely, there are courses that include in-depth correspondence with an instructor and classmates as well as a variety of ways for the learner to engage with the material.