The Design Process

Before you begin, we recommend reviewing this website's section on Understanding the Online Learning Environment to familiarize yourself with some of the biggest challenges (and opportunities) in teaching online.

The backward design process starts by identifying desired learning outcomes: the critical knowledge and skills students should gain as a result of taking your course. Beginning with the end in mind supports the process of working backwards to identify the forms of assessment and types of instruction that will be most effective in helping students achieve those goals.

For instance, are most of the learning outcomes in your course knowledge-based (students should be able to define X, compare and contrast variants of Y, etc.)? You'll likely find that recall-based assessments such as quizzes and exams are an effective way to measure this type of learning, and you'll likely use a significant amount of direct, didactic instruction such as readings and lectures in your teaching. Your efforts to support learner autonomy and self-direction might focus on creating good study tools or reference guides.

If you're instead teaching a course whose learning outcomes focus more on analytical and critical thinking (students should be able to analyze situation X, apply theory Y to context Z, generate advice and conclusions, etc.), your assessments will likely offer opportunities for students to "think out loud" so you can assess and guide their performance: essays, case analyses, reflection prompts. Your instructional strategy might dedicate more time to discussion than to pure knowledge transmission, and so on.

Perhaps your list of learning outcomes is primarily skill-based (students should be able to perform X procedure, identify Y criteria in Z context, etc.). You'll likely measure progress via assessments that ask students to perform those skills in a scaffolded way over time, starting with simple or isolated skill practice and building up to more authentic, integrated forms of practice. Your instructional strategies will likely involve more demonstration than lecture, and you'll want to dedicate significant time each week to supporting opportunities for individual and group practice. Metacognitive reflection can be especially important for learners in skill-based courses, so you may wind up leaning on discussion boards or reflection prompts to encourage students to evaluate their own progress and proactively identify areas for future improvement.

You are likely coming to this process with a thoughtful and well-refined set of assessments and instructional strategies already. But externalizing and reflecting on them can still be a powerful way to launch the redesign of your course for a new environment. The Learning Outcomes Tab in the 2UOS Essential Course Design Worksheet is designed to support this process.

Most residential course assessments will translate well to a digital environment, though there are some factors you may want to adjust. Use these resources on assessment design to guide that thinking. You can also use the Assessments Tab in the the 2UOS Essential Course Design Worksheet to make note of what you'll need to build online.

Before you begin planning specific weeks of your course, take a moment to think big picture about which of your teaching tactics and learning activities will work best as asynchronous, self-paced coursework and which would be best saved for the synchronous live session. A summary of the types of teaching and learning that work best in either modality appears below, and can also be found in the the Instruction Strategies Tab of the 2UOS Essential Course Design Worksheet.

Asynchronous Coursework

• Communicating learning objectives and expectations

• Activating prior knowledge

• Communicating the value and relevance of learning

• Building foundational knowledge via direct instruction of core concepts

• Sharing contextualizing stories and examples

• Demonstrating skills

• Individual knowledge checks and practice activities

• Preparing for the live session by kickstarting conversation and collecting questions

• Personal reflection and consolidation

Synchronous Live Session

• Reaffirming objectives and expectations

• Checking knowledge, addressing misconceptions, or clearing up misunderstandings

• Debriefing individual practice activities

• Small group skills practice and discussion

• Peer-to-peer critique and feedback

• Student presentations, followed by Q&A

• Discussion of current events

• Additional skills demonstrations as needed

• Group reflection and consolidation

• Setting the stage for the following week

To give you a head start on designing each week of your course, we've pre-populated your course shell in the Online Campus with a weekly template. The template incorporates our general recommendations for basic online course design, including providing a mix of asynchronous and synchronous instruction in lieu of your in-person class time; it should work for most courses, but can be adjusted as needed to suit your specific needs.

Click here to walk through tips and details for designing effective learning using the weekly template.

The Preconfigured Weekly Template Tab of the 2UOS Essential Course Design Worksheet is designed to support your planning. Pre-populated with the recommended template, it also contains resources such as a learning category list and checkboxes to help you organize materials as you prepare to build your course.

Regardless of whether you use our template or design your own, we strongly recommend a consistent format from week to week so that students know what to expect. The 2UOS Essential Course Design Worksheet can support this process: simply make a copy of the week you designed using the Preconfigured Weekly Template Tab for each week of your course, and adapt from there. Keep in mind that weeks dedicated to exams, presentations, or other milestone learning events may require a different treatment.

Each course has been preconfigured with a "toolbox" that houses essential materials students may need to access over time, such as your syllabus, coursepack, etc. Once you've gotten a firm sense of what's happening week-by-week in your course, you'll want to begin aggregating these touchstone materials for students. The 2UOS Essential Course Design Worksheet contains a Course Toolbox Tab to help you make note of any materials you will need to create and place in this section.

Congratulations—the planning work is done. Now it's time to build your course and get it ready for students!

The tabs in the 2UOS Essential Course Design Worksheet spreadsheet that are highlighted in pink contain checklists for you to help guide the process of building your course. Use those tabs to track what's been done and what remains using the "Complete?" checklists throughout.

For the mechanics of how to edit your course shell, see:

• Editing an Existing Activity or Resource for how to edit the existing pages,

• Studio-in-a-Box resources for how to record and edit video,

• Adding a New Activity or Resource for how to create new pages in your course.