Design And Application Of Micro-Courses In Distance Education

With the development and maturity of computer multimedia, network and communication technology, distance education has undergone transformation from correspondence education to online education. Distance education breaks the limitations of school education, makes learning no longer under restrict of time, place, age, and makes lifelong learning become possible. The born of mobile learning and ubiquitous learning accelerate the development of distance education. In online education, online course is the way for learners to acquire knowledge. The quality of online courses directly affects the quality of distance learning. It is necessary to pay attention to the quality of online courses. Now our online courses are still have some deficiencies, such as the applicability of poor network curriculum resources, lack of self-learning resources and so on. The born of micro-courses changes the way people learning and teaching. Taking into account its unique characteristics, it seems that micro-courses can make up the lack of distance education.Micro-course is the product of the digital age. Features of micro-courses are clear objectives, have a prominent theme, dapper, independent. Micro-courses can make contribute to the diversity personalization of online courses. So this paper combining the advantages of online courses and micro-courses, explores the design patterns and application principles of micro-courses in the environment of distance education.Six points of this paper:1. This paper makes a clear definition of micro-course. It includes thetheoretical foundation of micro-course, analysis the related concepts of micro-course.2. Situation analysis of micro-course. From three aspects analysis the construction status of micro-courses:literature analysis, content analysis, resources construction status. At the same time, this paper discusses the feasibility of micro-courses using in distance education.3. Design and make of micro-courses:include preliminary analysis (analysis about Requirements, Learning Environment, Learners), summed up the general principles of selecting content, lists the tools of making micro-courses, summarizes the design patterns.4. Production of specific cases:selects online courses " the Theory and Practice of Distance Education " as an example, produces15micro-courses cases, makes a detailed design of "Exploring the Origin of Distance Education" micro-course’s script.5. Constructed micro-courses evaluation system. With the help of academic experts, the author finished the construction of micro-courses evaluation system. Learners finished the evaluation of the design of micro-courses according to the evaluation system.6. Make a summary:it includes achievement, innovation, areas in need of improvement of this study.