Course Design and Technology for Synchronous Interaction in an Online Course

Online course offerings in higher education continue to grow because of the strong demand. Though many online courses are based on an asynchronous model, there are courses that require real-time interaction between students themselves and between students and the instructor, which means synchronous interaction is necessary. The technology exists to support this mode of instruction but there are challenges to how to structure an online synchronous meeting. This paper presents the approach taken for an online business course about enterprise resource planning (ERP) and the techniques applied to help ensure successful student interaction and learning. The added challenge in this course was the use of a simulation that runs live during synchronous class meetings. From the outset the design of this synchronous online ERP course was based on the Quality Matters (QM) Program standards to help ensure the course structure was effective in guiding students through the course requirements and content. The article summary has some feedback from students and gives suggestions for improvements to future course offerings.