UNC System Course on Designing Effective Online Courses

Rhombus Learning, in conjunction with Faculty Fellows at the UNC System Digital Learning Initiative and UNC-TV, led the design and development of a 20-hour workshop for the UNC System called, Designing Effective Online Courses. The workshop has been delivered to thousands of faculty and staff across the State of North Carolina to help them prepare and design courses to teach online.

By the end of the workshop, faculty were able to:

• Differentiate between designing for in-person and online courses.
• Apply design thinking, backward design and universal design for learning to the design of their online course.
• Describe common “problems of practice” in both online and in-person classes.
• Develop specific and measurable learning outcomes for their course and align assessments, instructional strategies, and pedagogical approaches with their outcomes.
• Compare synchronous and asynchronous instruction and determine the best mode(s) of instruction for their outcomes.
• Determine which assessment and instructional strategies can transfer from in-person to online courses and what strategies must change.
• Create activities that encourage student engagement and interaction.

The below video created by the UNC System provides an overview of the course.