Design Process

Design an Online Course

In this highly collaborative process, faculty course developers are paired with a skilled Learning Designer to design or redesign a fully online course from the ground up. This five-phase process involves weekly planning and brainstorming meetings, crafting learning objectives and student learning outcomes, mapping, organizing, and developing instructional materials and interactive content, designing assessments and evaluation strategies, creating opportunities for meaningful interaction and student engagement, maintaining ongoing communication and feedback, and participating in a high-quality review of the completed online course. 

  1. Course development process

    1. PRE-DESIGN

      Phase 1

      The pre-design phase kicks off the development process and aims to gather important information to ensure that the online course meets the needs of the students and engages them throughout their learning journey.

    2. CURRICULUM DESIGN & MEDIA PLANNING

      Phase 2

      Planning continues in the curriculum design and media planning phase where faculty will start a course map and explore various content types to begin planning the media elements for their online course.  

    3. Prototype

      Phase 3

      Faculty work towards a finalized media plan and course map during the prototype phase, enabling their designer to build a course prototype and conduct an in-process quality review. 

    4. Media Creation

      Phase 4

      The media plan gets put into action during the media creation phase, where faculty collaborate with their designer to create engaging instructional content and learning activities for their course.

    5. Review, Close-Out, Revision

      Phase 5

      In this final phase of development, faculty complete a self-assessment of their completed course, provide design feedback, and plan for future revisions while Digital Learning conducts a final high-quality course review.  

      6.  

Development Effort

Designing or redesigning a fully online course requires significant time and collaborative effort. This comprehensive process is recommended for:

  • courses starting from scratch or with minimal existing instructional materials.
  • courses that require development of all (or most) major components.
  • courses that need new instructional materials, learning activities, technologies, and/or assessments.
  • courses that have not been designed in partnership with InEd Digital Learning or have been more than five years since development.

 

Development Time

While development time will vary between courses, faculty should expect to commit to at least 5-7 hours a week with some weeks being heavier and some weeks being lighter.
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