Developing a criteria set for an online learning environment

Although designing an online course is a difficult task, it is one that is faced by educators almost on a daily basis. There is a lot of pressure to put one\´s course online and little research available for the "best" way to do it. There are course management systems that aid in the procedural tasks, but we still don\´t know the optimal design for an online course. This paper presents a study to develop a criteria set for excellence in online courses, from the student perspective. A two-fold approach was taken in this study. A group of students "brainstormed" a criteria list of important factors for an online learning environment. A second group of students then validated the criteria. A factorial analysis was performed analyzing the criteria by rating and rank order.