AN INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN MODEL AND CRITERIA FOR DESIGNING AND DEVELOPING ONLINE VIRTUAL LABS

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to propose a general instructional design model to teach students in faculty of education, especially in department of educational technology how to design and develop online virtual labs in a common way. We have made analyses of previous instructional design models and related studies in regard to the virtual labs to specify diverse features of the proposed model. It was found that the online virtual labs have no conventional instructional design model, especially for designing and developing stages and also no common shape and components. Based on these results, we have reached to a new suggestion model which guides the students in refinement of the future learning environment using recent technology. In this paper, we also present a list of criteria for designing and developing the online virtual labs.as a modern principles for directing designing process of online virtual labs environments to become instructional products. We have made a derivation of these criteria from previous studies related to the virtual labs, e-Learning technologies and some miscellaneous technological resources in educational technology. These criteria would provide the students with educational and technological guidelines to produce the online virtual labs with high quality and efficiency.