For Faculty

Five Characteristics of a Quality Online Course

By Courtney Line, Instructional Designer

In this day and age, online courses are becoming more and more popular, and in some cases, necessary. Many professors are buying into the idea of online learning, but don't realize there is more to online course design than just taking their face-to-face content and putting it online. Quality course design is pertinent for student success; and while there are many characteristics of a quality course, the following five are highly important.

Outcome Driven: The goal of any course should be student success and knowledge growth. So, designing a course with these goals in mind will make for a much better course. A great way to create an outcome-driven course is by using a Backward Design Technique. In the book, "Understanding by Design," Wiggins and McTighe (2005) encourage the "Backward Design" method. The primary focus of course design when using this technique becomes the desired learning outcomes or objectives.

Engaging: An engaging course tends to make learners more curious and invested. This then leads to a more natural learning approach. The student doesn't realize that they are "learning" and in turn actually learns more. Multimedia integration is a great way to make your course more engaging.

Intuitive Navigation: When designing a course, the content of the course isn't the only thing that you have to worry about. The layout of a course can hinder a student's success if it isn't clear and easy to follow. When you reduce the amount of searching, clicking, and scrolling, it allows your students to spend more time learning the actual content, and they are less likely to miss critical details.

Student Interaction: When you offer a course online, you tend to lose the personal presence that students are used to in a face-to-face course. So, incorporating various methods of student interaction can bring the personal aspect back into the course. Also, encouraging student interaction will help bring the student into the course and make them more responsible for their own learning.

Accessible: While accessible documents are important in any course, when offering a course online it is vital that your course and all its content meet accessibility standards to accommodate student disabilities. Here at TTU eLearning & Academic Partnerships we strive to meet the WCAG 2.0AA standards. Creating an accessible course will take time and effort up front, but this will lead to a more inclusive course that all students are able to access. Designing a course with accessibility in mind results in a better-quality course experience for everyone.

While there are many other methods of designing a quality course, the above five characteristics will help you design your course with best practices in mind. You can find these characteristics in our OSCQR Rubric that we use as an evaluation tool for all our courses. For more information on our Quality Course Design evaluations or if you would like help incorporating any of these characteristics into your course visit our Instructional Design Website or send us an email, and we will be glad to assist you.