Designing & Teaching an Online Course

The Instructional Design and Media Production Studio has created Designing & Teaching an Online Course, which shares best practices, resources, tools, and technologies to create a quality online course. It has been developed as an online course to help model best practices and research on online learning and is available on Blackboard.

At the end of Designing & Teaching an Online Course, you will be able to:

  • Identify the standards of practice for designing an online course.
  • Utilize the steps in backward design to plan an online course.
  • Explain the elements of an effective online course.
  • Develop an online course in the LMS.
  • Explain how instructor/TA presence and effective facilitation and teaching support student learning and success.
  • Identify methods to promote community and engagement in an online course.
  • Plan strategies to collect feedback on course design and facilitation in an online course.

Each module contains guidance and advice that you can use to design an online course by yourself or with an instructional designer. Throughout these modules, you will learn how to plan, build, facilitate, and teach an online course.

The online asynchronous course contains the following modules:

  • Module 01 – What makes a good online course?
  • Module 02 – How do I begin planning my online course?
  • Module 03 – What does good online teaching and facilitation look like? (Designed in partnership with the Center for the Advancement of Teaching Excellence.)
  • Module 04 – How do I build an accessible online course site?

If you would like to be enrolled in Designing & Teaching an Online Course, please complete this contact form. Although this course does not have an instructor, if you encounter questions as you engage with the learning activities and instructional materials, please email idmpstudio@uic.edu to address your questions, as well as to support your implementation of the best practices shared.

After completing this course, you can refer back to the resources for continuous support during the design process, as well as continuous quality improvement during the implementation process. We encourage you to bookmark the resources in the course and share them with colleagues too!