Developing Online Family Life Prevention and Education Programs

Although numerous online family life education programs have been developed over the past few years, there has been little discussion about best practices in the development of these programs. This article presents a framework to assist family life educators in the development and improvement of online programs from the initial problem analysis and creation of program content through instructional design to implementation and evaluation. The emphasis is on the unique program development issues that are critical to developing family life education and prevention programs within online delivery systems.Key Words: family life education, Internet, online, prevention, program development, program evaluation.The Internet has become an important tool for educating families. As early as 1999, Hughes, Ebata, and Dollahite noted that the Internet was having an impact on family life education (FLE), providing a new model for educating and helping families. Over the last two decades, scholars have come to recognize the Internet as an important tool for finding information and learning about family life issues (e.g., Radey & Randolph, 2009). The Internet brings both opportunities and challenges to FLE. On one hand, family life educators can reach wider audiences than ever before. On the other hand, the Internet continues to evolve from a place in which people passively read or view content to a platform for user-generated content. For example, recent estimates suggest that 30% of people have created online content (Pew Internet and American Life Project, 201 1) and 65% share information through social media (Madden & Zickuhr, 2011). Through online content and social media, individuals share ideas and answer others' questions about family life issues. Thus, a challenge to family life educators with "expertbased" resources is, in essence, to compete with "user-generated" content. This means that for online FLE to be effective, educators need to develop programs that are based on science and employ a rich set of interactive strategies that will engage participants. This article presents guidelines for family life educators to follow when developing online programs. Drawing on the FLE and program development literature, in addition to existing web-based program delivery, we define online FLE and present a broad framework that can be applied to a variety of online FLE efforts.DEFINING ONLINE FAMILY LIFE EDUCATIONScholars have defined family life education as "any educational activity ... designed to strengthen relationships in the home and foster positive individual, couple, and family development" (Duncan & Goddard, 201 1, p. 5). Online FLE can be defined similarly, where the educational effort is implemented via the Internet rather than via traditional delivery methods. Although this sounds simple, the continuous evolution of technology devices and software creates a wide range and variety of program possibilities. For example, webbased education efforts include but are not limited to (a) information "clearinghouses" or websites where users decide when and how to interact with materials in an unstructured way; (b) structured learning experiences that have guided interactions to achieve learning goals; or (c) opportunities for interactions with experts, instructors, or peers (Ebata & Dennis, 201 1). Some programs use some or all of these elements. Moreover, programs designed for groups (vs. individuals) provide the opportunity for discussions to occur at the same time (i.e., synchronously, as in a group chat) or at times convenient for users (i.e., asynchronously, as in a message board). Indeed, ' 'part of the difficulty in unifying the terminology is due to the heterogeneity of web-based programs and online communication capabilities - in terms of what they offer, how they operate, and therefore, how dynamic they are" (Barak, Klein, & Proudfoot, 2009, p. 5).We define online family life education as any educational outreach effort that is primarily delivered via the Internet and intentionally facilitates individual and family well-being by using online technologies that include programmatic educational strategies or structure. …