Designing Effective Online Education

Why is ‘design’ important when thinking about online teaching and learning? An effective online course is more than just learning materials; it brings together project management, marketing, media production and more. There are lots of aspects to consider, such as who is your target audience? What platform will you use? How will you assess your learners? What will your learners gain by the end of the learning experience? All these questions and more play a key role in creating a course that is engaging and effective for your learners.

Through five modules, we will guide you through five key stages of online course development, which are all underpinned by quality assurance: 

• Preparation
• Creation
• Development
• Delivery
• Ongoing

You will complete practice and research activities, explore case studies and gain access to downloadable resources, so you come away with a practical toolkit you can use in your own context. We will show you how to design a course that is pedagogically sound, fully accessible, and uses open educational resources. No matter the size of the course team or resources available, these fundamental building blocks will enable you to design an online course that is engaging and impactful in your subject area.

You will also participate in weekly live webinars with members of the Online Course Production team at the University of Edinburgh, as well as guest speakers. By the end of the course, you will have completed a series of key preparatory activities around target audience, learning design frameworks, digital tools and more, so you'll be ready to bring your own course design to life.

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

• Identify the five stages of effective course design and development and key team members involved at each stage.
• Identify suitable formats for creating engaging online materials and active learning in line with accessibility and open licensing guidance.
• Evaluate a range of learning design frameworks and digital tools, and explain some of their benefits and limitations.
• Evaluate the success of a course and areas for improvement based on learner feedback and analytics.
• Complete a series of key preparatory activities as a foundation for creating your own online course.

This course is for academics, educators, learning technologists, learning designers, instructional designers, and those in professional services roles who support the development and delivery of digital education.

There are no entry requirements for this course.