Best Practice Instructional Design in the Synchronous Cyber Classroom for Early Childhood Students

This paper investigates the correlation between the quality of instructional design and learning outcomes for early childhood students in the online synchronous cyber classroom. The synchronous cyber classroom outperforms all other modes of instruction in enabling students to integrate visual, auditory and kinaesthetic processes simultaneously. This can be equated with higher levels of cognitive function. During 2001-2007 a group of students aged 5 to 8 years collaborated with their teacher at Brisbane School of Distance Education, Australia in a trial of online synchronous learning. The trial identified ´bestpractice´ in the instructional design of synchronous lessons delivered using the learning platform of Youth Knowledge Network at the National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan. A guideline for ´best practice´ in the instructional design of online synchronous cyber lessons for early childhood students has been developed and discussed.