When the Medium Illustrates the Content: Exploiting the Unique Features of Online Communication

This article "present[s] the results of an evaluation of an online undergraduate course in psychology that adheres to the seven widely accepted principles of effective online teaching and suggests an eighth principle: using the unique benefits and constraints of online communication to prompt critical thinking about various facets of human communication, psychology, sociology, or human-computer interface design. Formative evaluation of this new course, carried out by Foertsch over three semesters, showed that it benefited from an illuminating association between its content—the cognitive and social experiences of people with autism—and its online delivery method, in which students communicated with each other and the professor in asynchronous and synchronous forums that removed the nonverbal social cues present in face-to-face communication. By applying the seven principles to the design of this course, Gernsbacher created a learning environment that 87% of 105 upper-division students rated as "extremely" or "very" useful in developing their critical thinking skills and a course that a number of students described as one of the best they had ever taken."