| Summary: | The great variety of authoring activities involved in the development of Web-based learning environments requires a more comprehensive integration of principles and strategies not only from instructional design, but also from other disciplines such as human-computer interaction and software engineering. The present dissertation addresses this issue by proposing an object-oriented instructional design (OOID) model based on Tennyson's fourth generation instructional systems development (ISD4) model. It incorporates object-oriented analysis and design methods from human-computer interaction (HCI) and software engineering into a single framework for Internet use in education. Introducing object orientation into the instructional design of distributed hypermedia learning environments allows for an enhanced utilization of so-called learning objects that can be used, re-used or referenced during technology-mediated instruction. In addition, by applying the Unified Modeling Language (UML), a modeling notation tool is available to instructional designers that helps them to visually communicate design specifications using a widely established standard. This developmental research study is based on an extensive document analysis of resources from a variety of disciplines involved in the instructional Web site development process. The author identifies a set of authoring activities from ISD as well as HCI and software engineering that play a major role in instructional Web sites development. These authoring activities have been specified based on the object-oriented paradigm and visualized using UML. The author provides an example from a higher education setting about how the OOID model can be implemented in the design of Web-based instruction. This study contributes to the ongoing research into the design of Web-based instruction. The results will be of interest to educators, instructional designers, and other e-learning specialists who want to implement learning objects and improve their development of Web-based instruction by incorporating object orientation as the primary development paradigm and UML as the principle modeling notation tool. This research also provides suggestions on how to develop instructional Web sites for international use.
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