Research methods for validating and deriving guidelines for e-learning online communities

E-learning is becoming a major component in academia today. Therefore, the success of e-learning online communities is crucial in order to ensure their permanency and effectiveness. There is a need for formalized guidelines in e-learning that instruct the designer (course instructor) on how to design, maintain, and manage a course. Some research has been done on the subject, but none proposes formalized guidelines, and none draws the results from the users’ perspectives. The users, students in this case, should be at the heart of the design and their thoughts, wishes, and needs should be implemented in the user-centered design. In this study, through an iterative testing approach, the researchers formalized and validated a set of design heuristics that instruct an online educator on how to design, manage, deliver, and nurture an e-Learning online community.