Wk4_Instructional Design_How should an online lesson look?

What did you learn about the design of online courses this week that will affect how you think about this form of instruction in the future?     

The majority of what I saw through my investigation of online course design left me searching for more.  To be honest, it was exactly what I expected.  In my classroom, I have frequently used http://www.explorelearning.com/ which takes advantage of a dynamic visual environment to allow student to investigate concepts using sliders, etc. on a coordinate plane or perhaps doing other interactive investigations.  This is an improvement of what I see in many math classrooms where many teachers are stuck in the "static" 2-d world of writing on the board.  The explorelearning "gizmos" are very similar to what I saw on the sample lessons for K12.  In addition to them being more visual and taking advantage of seeing things move, the explorelearning lessons and the k12 lessons seemed to have pretty well-crafted step by step investigations that help a student walk through an investigation and make observations (kind of like a scientist) to learn something new.  I think this element should be taken advantage of in instructional design.

I am  trying to spin it forward, to some extent for k12 because they got mainly poor design comments (even one from me) but the sole fact that there are sample lessons to view has to earn them some Kudos.  My poking around with VHS, the CO state school I originally investigated, and a couple of other schools had me clicking away to find no sample lessons are activities.

So, let me summarize what I saw that I consider good:

Alignment/Transparency - Even though some materials were dry in their presentation, the lessons and scope and sequences (I took a look at several course sequences) were very clearly stated.  A lot of the grading elements were also very clear.  As a parent or academic advisor I appreciate this.  

Some research has gone into the materials.  I found no content errors or misleading activiites.  I also liked the prerequisite skills checked before each lesson.  This is sound instruction.

Areas for improvement:

True "Digital Media".  Needs to break out of the mold of cute pictures with simple cartoons that move to something more.   

True interaction.  I know many courses are asynchronous, but even some kind of real-time assessments for understanding or somehow being connected to others in a learning community needs to be implemented.

The challenge is getting the best sequenced and assessed curricula (pretty achieveable goal) somehow enriched by dynamic, interactive media, that connects communities of learners.