Designing an Online Course

Introduction to Online Course Design

Please watch the following video, designed to introduce faculty to the online course design process used at the FCTL. We think it’s helpful for you to understand a little about what’s important to us when we create our courses.

What's the Role of an Instructional Designer?

If this is your first online course, the term “instructional designer” (ID) might be new to you. In a nutshell, an instructional designer is someone who is trained to think about the process of teaching and learning in both a creative and systematic way. IDs help faculty design learning experiences that best meet their outcomes for the course.

Here at UMB, instructional designers also serve as project managers during the course development process—making sure that all the pieces are in place and that the schedule is on track.

They also build the course sites for new online courses.

Having IDs build the first course site means that faculty can spend more time focusing on the teaching and learning components of their courses, and less time button-clicking around Blackboard. (Although, of course, it's important for faculty to be comfortable teaching in Blackboard. They help with that, too.)

A bit about the ID/faculty partnership

You might not be used to having someone deeply involved in the thought process of designing your course. Having an outsider ask you about your learning goals and course activities might make you feel as though your ideas or expertise are being challenged. This is not the intent at all. This questioning process serves an important purpose:

By understanding exactly what students should be able to do as a result of the instruction, the ID can help the faculty member select the best instructional and assessment strategies.

Faculty control all the decisions about how the course is structured, what content to present, what activities, assessments, and discussion questions to include. Any suggestions or feedback an ID provides is strictly for the faculty member to use at his/her discretion and is never used for hiring, promotion, and tenure decisions.

Tips for working with your ID:

• Be a good communicator. Let your ID know what works well in your in-person course, what you’d like to be different, your “wish list” for the online course. If there’s a teaching strategy you’re curious about, let them know. Something you know you don’t want to do? They need to know that as well. That said…

• Be open to new ideas. This is 100% your course, and your instructional designer will never push a technique or technology on you that you don’t want to use. (Well, except Bb--we can’t avoid that one!) But they might have an idea to help you reach a course outcome in a way you hadn’t considered before.

• Respect deadlines. We understand how busy faculty are and that the unexpected can happen. But it really does “take a village” to create an online course and it can’t be thrown together at the last minute. There are production processes that involve reserving other people’s time (and possibly studio space), as well as behind-the-scenes building, testing, and problem-solving within your course site. The deadlines ensure your ENTIRE course is ready to go on the first day of the semester, so you can put your energies where you need them most—engaging with your students.

Our Guiding Design Principles

Backward Design

Often, when designing a new course or changing an existing one, faculty start by focusing on instructor behaviors. "I need to record my lectures and link to these articles from the library and add a unit on Topic X," for example.

In 'backward design," this process starts by thinking about desired student behaviors. By clearly articulating what students should be able to do as a result of the instruction, faculty and instructional designers can more clearly identify the learning strategies and course materials that best produce those outcomes.

Alignment

The course design process at UMB will ensure that all aspects of your online course are aligned. By aligned, we mean that the course materials, activities, and assessments in your course clearly correlate to the learning outcomes you've described. Alignment ensures that students:

• understand what skills they're expected to learn in the course,

• have all the necessary materials and opportunities to acquire those skills, and

• demonstrate those skills via carefully crafted assessments.

Quality Matters

Finally, you will probably hear your ID mention the organization Quality Matters (QM). Since 2003, QM has been a leader in the quality assurance process for online courses, receiving national recognition for its faculty-centered, evidence-based approach to quality.

Through a carefully designed rubric and a certified peer-review process, QM-certified courses ensure that students are presented with well-designed, student-centered experiences with clear learning outcomes, course materials and technologies that facilitate the course learning objectives, and appropriate levels of interaction in an environment that is accessible to all learners.

Here at UMB, the QM standards are infused throughout our course design process. Before your course is released, instructional designers will conduct an informal course review based on the QM rubric. If you have been working closely with your ID during the development process, most of the high-priority standards should be met.

UMB Faculty Discuss Collaboration in Online Course Design