Online Course Design Best Practices

General Course Design

For a general guide to the course design process, instructors can consult the other pages in this section:

Online Course Design

In disrupted times that call for flexibility on short notice, instructors can benefit from beginning their design process with an online course design that adds back in face-to-face elements. This will ensure continuity for any remote students and for any unexpected shift to online instruction. AS&E has adopted a aligned with online best practices to make it easier for instructors to transition their courses.

Further, AS&E student feedback on spring and fall 2020 courses highlighted key learning challenges that arose when courses designed for face-to-face instruction were suddenly shifted to emergency remote instruction, as well as student concerns about workload in courses recently transitioned to an online modality. Drawing on this feedback, this page highlights those areas most critical to address.

Student Workload

Online courses may be unfamiliar to students, including the workload expectations and distribution and the software tools.

Associated design principles:

  • Ensure that the course workload is appropriate.
  • Communicate in advance how you calculated that workload with reference to the College Credit-Hour Policy.
  • Select supported tools, as those are vetted and often familiar to students, which reduces their cognitive load and ensures that technical support is available to them.
  • Communicate in advance what software tools students will be using and incorporate training on those software tools into the course.

Implementation recommendations:

  • Consult the to determine how many hours of work per course credit. Then use the to determine how long it will take students to complete their work. Adjust workload as needed.
  • Consider in the Fall 2020 Student Learning Survey responses and determine how you can address those relevant to your course.
  • Explain how you factored in the time of course elements that might seem like discrepancies to students (e.g., requiring viewing of recorded lectures and also synchronous class attendance).
  • Link to how-to documentation for from the places in the course website where you ask students to use them. Consult this list for additional supported software tools.
  • If students will be using specific software tools for assessments, offer students a low-stakes opportunity to become familiar with those software tools before the assessment.

Students and Instructor in Online Classroom at Different Times

Students are present in the online classroom (i.e., course website) at a wide variety of times when the instructor is not.

Associated design principles:

  • Clear “how-to” guidance:
    • Course websites should be highly structured, organized, and easy to navigate.
    • Instructions for learning activities should be clear, plain, and unambiguous.
    • Identify how students can contact you and specify when students should expect a response.
    • Set and model expected behavior for online interactions (netiquette).
  • Clear “why” guidance:
    • Transparently articulate the purpose of each learning activity, including its relationship to learning outcomes.

Implementation recommendations:

  • Use the structure provided in the . Consult the sample AS&E Blackboard courses to see how your colleagues used the template to structure their courses. Self-enroll by clicking on the “Faculty Resources” menu item in your Blackboard course and following the instructions.
  • Consult the best practices guide for office hours, including using an appointment scheduling tool such as or (built into , AS&E's email and standard software package) to schedule office hours.
  • Consider using a netiquette guide, such as adapted from Virginia Shea.
  • Consult the , which outlines how to articulate purpose, task, and criteria and provides this and this .

Build a Community of Inquiry

Building an online course “” contributes to student performance, engagement, and perseverance, but building community online entails different strategies than those used in face-to-face courses.

Associated design principles:

  • Promote student interaction and collaboration in the course.
  • Promote your students’ sense of you as an authentic real person in the online classroom.
  • Structure student learning by selecting, sequencing, and organizing course materials and activities.

Implementation recommendations:

  • , including tips for how to promote teacher presence, cognitive presence, and social presence in online courses (Center for Teaching Excellence, University of Virginia).
  • Learn how to to foster student success.
  • Consult , for practical rubrics, examples, and explanations of how to promote cognitive presence, instructor presence, and social presence.
  • Learn how to in this video from the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL).

Support and Consistency

Without the structure of face-to-face classes, some students can require greater levels of consistency and support from instructors to stay on track in online courses.

Associated design principles:

  • Build the course in modules that chunk the course into smaller consistent and similar parts.
  • Use frequent, low-stakes assessments with feedback.
  • Reach out proactively to students who have become disengaged.

Implementation recommendations:

  • Use the structure provided in the .
  • Learn how to promote student engagement using six techniques in the , including chunking your lectures into micro-lectures with associated learning activities.
  • Consider adopting to promote student learning and success.
  • Learn about simple design elements like nudges, goals contracts, mastery quizzes, and scaffolds in the “Fostering Student Persistence and Success” chapter in by Flower Darby and James M. Lang.
  • If pre-recording lectures for viewing before class, consult the best practices on the lectures web page for setting a schedule for you and your students.

Varied Learning Conditions

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, students are experiencing variable learning conditions.

Associated design principles:

  • Prioritize student access.
  • Consider alternative paths to meet the same learning outcomes should students encounter access challenges.
  • Be flexible when possible.

Implementation recommendations:

  • Consult the AS&E Academic Policies page to ensure that you are complying with mandatory policies, some of which are intended to ensure student access.
  • Ensure .
  • Students may experience access challenges related to their learning conditions, including differences in time zones, internet access, learning devices, living conditions, health, caregiving, and other factors. can provide alternatives for students who have access challenges. Refer students who need resources to the Basic Needs Hub.
  • Provide students with a means to communicate with you when they are experiencing access challenges. Remind them of it regularly, especially when major assessments are due.
  • When students experience access challenges, focus on ensuring that they can demonstrate that they have met the same learning outcomes as their classmates. Consult the learning outcomes section of this website.

Additional Resources

Online Course Design Rubric

: This checklist allows instructors to self-evaluate their course through the lens of best practices for online course design. The ÂÒÂ×Ç¿¼é uses the QM quality standards for its online courses.

Books on Online Education

by Michelle D. Miller covers cognitive principles in relation to online education, including attention, memory, thinking, and motivation.

by Flower Darby and James M. Lang covers course design, community creation, and student motivation.

by Linda B. Nilson and Ludwika A. Goodson uses cognitive research to inform a practical set of online course design principles.

by Tina Stavredes provides a conceptual overview of online education.

by Susan Ko and Steve Rossen is a practical how-to guide to online education.