Asynchronous Online Course Designs: Articulating Theory, Best Practices, and Techniques for Everyday Doctoral Education

Early online course materials were text-based and relied heavily on discussion forums as the de facto tool for interactions. Faculty members today, however, have many other choices for course design and course materials. There is not consensus for online course design guidelines or principles, though. Choices in course design by faculty members directly impact the quality of instruction and student learning experience. This article shares some of our theoretical and practical decisions faculty members at the University of South Carolina employ for online course design. Our experiences and decision-making may be useful for other members of the Online Ed.D. CPED Improvement Group (Online Ed.D. CIG), as well as other programs who may be experiencing emergency remote teaching as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, making an evolutionary transition to online or blended education, or considering a future transition to a fully online program. Links to the strategies and tools mentioned throughout this essay are collated in a list at the end.

Technology and Inquiry-Based Instructional Methods: A Design Case in Student-Centered Online Course Design

Although online course design is no longer new, few design cases describe the development of entire courses based on principles of student-centered learning design. This design case chronicles the context, design challenges, and successes and failures of a graduate course on Technology & Inquiry-based Instructional Methods for an online master’s program in educational technology at a regional university in the southwestern United States.

KISS: The Value of Simplicity in Online Education

Keeping diversity and inclusion in mind throughout the process of online course design and delivery can be daunting to instructors, course developers, and content creators. These concepts, along with access equity and legal compliance, can seem distant from the principal objective of content presentation and instruction. Recent public health circumstances resulted in much of higher education’s move to remote learning. This reveals the need for quality online education that seeks to remove barriers and create challenging and engaging opportunities for all learners. This article presents research-based and established best practices and universal standards to help educators create accessible, usable, and inclusive online learning environments in a way that simplifies the process, meets rigorous standards, and improves the experience for all learners.

The Burden of Alleviating the Burden During a Pandemic: Emotional literacy as a tool for online course design, adaptation, and evaluation

During the COVID-19 pandemic, most, if not all, courses were shifted to online learning formats. In this article, we share our experiences related to teaching and learning in a completely online, condensed (seven-week) graduate-level course during the fall 2020 semester. More specifically, we discuss the important role of emotional literacy as a mechanism for framing online course design, adaptation, and evaluation. We explore emotional literacy in terms of its necessity in teaching and learning in online contexts during a pandemic, beyond the scope of other obviously important non-traditional literacies, such as technological and informational literacies. To conclude, we offer practical suggestions for online course design, adaptation, and evaluation using emotional literacy as a framework and provide considerations for future research.

Mapping pedagogical touchpoints: Exploring online student engagement and course design

Online learning has been widely adopted in higher education but there is a need to better understand the nature of student engagement with online courses. For example, there are questions about whether students engage with courses as educators intend and what features of online courses engage students to enhance learning. Bringing together student and educator perspectives, this article reports on a study that identified ‘pedagogical touchpoints’ – opportunities within online courses for student engagement – to ascertain whether a better understanding of these could improve online course design and student engagement. Data were collected across three undergraduate online courses. Data analysis produced three key findings: mapping pedagogical touchpoints against dimensions of engagement reveals patterns that may inform enhanced course design, students’ engagement with pedagogical touchpoints varies according to their learning needs and desires, and mapping pedagogical touchpoints can inform course design at both conceptual and practical levels. Discussion of the findings highlights that purposeful design of online courses, including strategic planning for pedagogical touchpoints, can maximise the potential for student engagement and consequent learning.

Design Matters: Development and Validation of the Online Course Design Elements (OCDE) Instrument

Course design is critical to online student engagement and retention. This study focused on the development and validation of an online course design elements (OCDE) instrument with 38 Likert-type scale items in five subscales: (a) overview, (b) content presentation, (c) interaction and communication, (d) assessment and evaluation, and (e) learner support. The validation process included implementation with 222 online instructors and instructional designers in higher education. Three models were evaluated which included a one-factor model, five-factor model, and higher-order model. The five-factor and higher-order models aligned with the development of the OCDE. The frequency of use of OCDE items was rated above the mean 4.0 except for two items on collaboration and self-assessment. The overall OCDE score was related to self-reported levels of expertise but not with years of experience. The findings have implications for the use of this instrument with online instructors and instructional designers in the design of online courses.