Date of Award
5-1-2026
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Department
Education
First Advisor
Fadde, Peter
Abstract
The demand for asynchronous online courses dominates the distance learning landscape. and institutions must ensure the delivery of high-quality courses to meet the demand. One important aspect of quality assurance requires online courses to provide learners with regular and substantive interaction (RSI) to minimize learner isolation. Learner interaction, according to Moore (1989) is essential to quality online courses by integrating instructional strategies to promote three types of interaction (learner-to-content, learner-to-instructor and learner-to-learner). The proposed learner interaction formative evaluation framework (LIFE) was developed to identify and improve learner interaction throughout the course design and development process. Unlike most comprehensive quality assurance evaluations, the LIFE framework is focused solely on the integration of learner interactions in course design.This exploratory pilot study examines the insights of two instructional designers and two instructors of archived asynchronous online courses using the LIFE framework. The results suggest that inter-rater reliability among the participants in pair-wise analysis was not statistically significant. However, calculations of inter-rater agreement showed consistent areas of agreement especially among the two instructional designers. The insights gathered highlighted the easy-of-use, expediency, and the act of identifying interaction as value added to using the LIFE framework. Overall, the participants found the experience useful and could serve as a complementary measure to more established and comprehensive quality assurance evaluations.
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