Designing a User-friendly Online Course

Course Building Toolkit

a six-step process (Salmon, 2016). In stage 1, participants write a blueprint by agreeing on a mission statement and ‘look and feel’ for the new course. In stage 2, participants develop a storyboard by visually plotting the various components of the course (classes, assessments, and other activities) on A3 flip chart paper. In the third stage, participants develop an online prototype of their new course, by trying out some of the redesigned activities in the online platform. In stage four, participants perform a ‘reality check’ by asking other workshop participants to try out their prototype and offer feedback. Participants review and adjust the prototype in stage 5 and then develop an action plan (stage 6) whereby they decide what else needs to be done to complete the course, when it needs to be done, and by who

Trial and Error: Online Course Development, Better Together

In addition, the courses are more varied and faculty driven than they were before

They wanted to give faculty members a more active role in creating courses, speed up the process and fully utilize instructional designers.

Instructional designers had also developed a reputation on campus for completing repetitive tasks that instructors preferred not to tackle, such as creating folders in the learning management system and printing documents. Bond describes the dynamic as a “conversionist mentality: here's my stuff, put it online.”

“Every course looked like every other course, regardless of the discipline,”