Designing and validating educational standards for E-teaching in virtual learning environments (VLEs), based on revised Bloom’s taxonomy

The dominance of technology over various aspects of life has changed the digital natives' style of learning too. There, however, exists no comprehensive educational-based instruction on how to work with this generation of learners in Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs). The purpose of this study – therefore - is to develop and validate educational standards and indicators of e-learning environments. The mixed-method design applied in this study comprises of a qualitative stage involving a phenomenological study and a quantitative stage employing a survey research method. Semi-structured interviews with 12 experienced e-learning instructors were conducted to collect the qualitative data and a researcher-made questionnaire was distributed amongst 171 e-learning experts in the quantitative stage. Qualitative data was analyzed using Corbin and Strauss’s coding and Maxqda 10 Software, and quantitative data was analysed using inferential statistics. As the outcome of this study, two educational standards and 18 indispensable indicators based on Bloom-Anderson Taxonomy were developed and validated. These findings contribute to e-learning literature by highlighting the pedagogical standards need to be met in order to get the best out of learning technologies. These standards and indicators can be either used as a guide to design or evaluate e-learning initiatives from a pedagogical perspective.