The planning and design of your online course begins with brainstorming and the subsequent realization of concepts, ideas, and strategies that will become the plan for your course. We encourage you to meet with the eCampus staff as you undertake these steps.

Needs Analysis, Identifying Situational Factors, and Brainstorming:

Think through the course you will be teaching. Who are the students? What are your expectations? What are your department’s curricular needs? What skills do you hope students will take away? What challenges do you foresee? What broad educational goals do you have for your students? Answering these questions and others like them will prepare you to approach your course development process aware of the multiple challenges and needs that exist. An instructional designer can take you through a needs analysis of situational factors to help you address important pedagogical, institutional, and student based questions. L. Dee Fink has given permission for us to share one example, his Situational Factors Worksheet (.doc)

Map and Align Course Components:

Planning of any course can be far more effective when it is done systematically. With or without the assistance of an instructional design team, we encourage faculty to map their course objectives, assessments, and learning activities by creating a Course Design Plan. This knowledge base article on  Using a Course Design Plan  is a great resource. As you read through the next steps in the design process, we encourage you to refer to the Course Design Plan and imagine how you would complete it for an online course.

Develop Learning Objectives:

At the core of successful online courses are the course learning outcomes written as measurable student centered learning objectives. Learning objectives become the foundation for your course by clearly defining your expectations for students and guiding the selection and creation of assessments, activities, and content that you and the instructional design team will develop.