Redefining the Quality of Online Courses: From A Smiley Test To A Seven-Star Rating

The past two decades have witnessed an exponential increase of both blended and fully online courses in higher education. Nevertheless, despite the invested efforts in defining and examining quality issues concerning online courses, there seems to be an equal growth in the challenges as well as the boundaries for defining the quality of online courses. According to a large body of literature, it appears that the most common instruments for gauging quality are course evaluations and surveys from the perspectives of instructors, learners, and administrators based on their perceptions, and experiences. In light of the rapidly changing needs of the new generation of “digital” learners, this study aims to redefine the quality of online courses from a comprehensive perspective that would expand the quality standards beyond pedagogical issues to include the hidden aspects of quality such as the instructional design, web design, facilitation and coaching, course presentation, learning experience, as well as service experiences. The study employs a mixed-method research design including, a descriptive-analytic methodology of both quantitative and qualitative approaches, where a triangulated set of data were collected from a diverse sample of Instructional designers, SMEs, and students enrolled in a fully online course at Sultan Qaboos University. The outcomes of this study could be used as a blueprint for designing online courses that respond to learners’ diverse needs.