Designing Online Courses

Course Planning

• Plan using the course map template and unit worksheet.
• Tips for how to chunk course content for eLearning.
• Create a Quality Matters account to access the rubric and course review tools.
• Coordinate a course rhythm using templates.

For more information on planning a quality online course, visit the Course planning resources.

Learning Objectives & Alignment

• Build an objective using the interactive UW-Madison Objective Builder.
• Learn more in this lesson about Writing Measurable Objectives.
• Review the wealth of resources about Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy.
• Utilize the UW-Madison tips and examples for writing learning goals.

For more information on writing measurable learning objectives, visit the Learning outcomes and alignment resources.

Assessment & Measurement

• Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs) in online courses.
• Authentic tasks to assess student learning.
• Utilize the UW-Madison suggested course assessment tools.

To explore assessment strategies and view examples of diagnostic, formative, and summative assessments, visit the Student Assessment Approaches resources.

Instructional Materials

• Download a syllabus checklist and template using Quality Matters standards.
  Note: These resources link to UW-Madison Google App documents and will require a UW-Madison NetID login. Please read our instructions for logging into UW-Madison Google Apps.
• Review UW-Madison’s complete guide to creating and selecting accessible course materials.
• Open Educational Resources (OERs)
  • Start with this introduction to Open Educational Resources.
  • Search the multitude of Open Educational Resources.
  • Review in-depth strategies on how to integrate Open Educational Resources.
• Copyright Resources:
  • Review UW-Madison Library copyright and fair-use resources.
  • Think through fair use decisions with this useful tool.
  • Comply with copyright and fair-use guidelines (Blended Toolkit).
• View the Examples of Instructional Materials table to explore examples and resources for various instructional materials.

For more information about instructional materials commonly used in online courses, visit the Instructional materials for online courses resources.

Course Activities & Learner Interaction

• Absorb, Do, and Connect activities and examples
• Variety of online activity descriptions, strategies, and examples
• Suggestions for how to make learning online active
• Develop instructions using the online activity worksheet.

For more information on the types of interaction and activity frameworks used in online courses, visit the Course activities and learner interactions  resources.