| This case study investigated the relationship between online course design quality and course effectiveness at a community college in Michigan by examining the process for determining course design quality, the representative elements of course design quality, and the course effectiveness as shown by learner success, perceptions, and content mastery in subject area of Security. It confirmed the hypothesis that increasing the online course design quality through a team-led design process had a significant relationship to course effectiveness. To explore the relationship between online course design quality and course effectiveness the study employed a mixed methods research design. The study concluded that there was a generally positive relationship between course design quality and course effectiveness, that a community college in Michigan had a solid, though perhaps incomplete, process for determining online course quality, that the elements that evaluators described as positive during the course approval process correlated closely with the elements of quality identified by learners, instructors, and administrators, and that the learner success, learner perceptions, and content mastery triangulated well and tended to mutually reinforce the indications of the others. The course appeared highly effective in all of the measures in this study. |
