Bridge to Quality: A QM Online Course Design Guide

Basic Edition

Last updated: October 2023

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How to Use This Guide

The Design Guide is organized into three, overarching Phases, with discrete and actionable Design Steps contained within each Phase. The phased, iterative approach outlined in this Guide is best applied during a multi-week period set aside for course design.

The process and steps recommended represent a path — where applicable — from emergency remote instruction (ERI) successes to quality course design based on QM Higher Education Specific Review Standards. While ERI was ubiquitous during the COVID pandemic, the Guide retains this portion to recognize that faculty and designers are called to quickly transition a course from on-campus to online for a variety of reasons, such as adding an online option right before the academic term begins. Users of this guide should view the steps as a progression to achieving a quality online course that may ultimately meet QM Standards in an official course review.

Definition of Symbols

This icon signals a Design Step detailing Action Items that progress your course design. If you can't complete a Step, focus on making progress on the Action Item as much as possible before moving on, knowing that you can come back — using an iterative approach — to complete, improve, or refine previous work.

This icon signals notations related to “foundational design.” Tasks with explanations next to this icon are directly related to designing a course to meet QM Specific Review Standards associated with the alignment of course components.

This icon signals notations related to synchronous components of a course and/or considerations for hybrid courses. Refer to these for creating consistency between course elements used in the in-person or virtual portions of a course and the accompanying asynchronous elements (usually found in a Learning Management System or other course site).

This icon signals steps that you may have taken when using the QM Emergency Remote Instruction Checklist (ERIC) to quickly transition your course from face-to-face to remote delivery and/or hosted in an online platform (LMS or Google classroom). Not all QM Course Design Guide steps have ERIC equivalents.

alignment

This symbol indicates a Specific Review Standard included in the principle of alignment. When aligned, course assessments, instructional materials, learning activities, and technologies are directly tied to and support learning objectives.

Definition of Phases

Phase 1: Align

A phase of thoughtful pedagogic planning. Begin with foundational design: measurable learning objectives, aligned assessments, activities, materials, and technology. Plan your design (or evaluate your existing course) using an alignment map/course map — a tool that identifies alignment gaps or mismatches. Assessments and course material are created in Phase 2.

Phase 2: Engage

Focus on designing activities, content, and technology to elevate presence, interaction and engagement in your course. Engaged learners feel a sense of belonging and are active participants in the online learning community. Active learning is vital to an engaging online course, and this phase will present a variety of considerations for engaging online learners.

Phase 3: Connect

Connect course components by organizing content into learning units. Use text or graphics to help learners connect learning activities and materials with learning objectives. Connect learners with the appropriate information and resources to help them succeed.

Plan for Inclusivity

Due to the potential diversity of learners enrolled in online, blended or otherwise technology-enhanced courses, aspects such as time zone, geographical location, language, and cultural/religious differences need to be taken into consideration. Instructors should acknowledge and show understanding of those matters and, whenever possible, make efforts to provide reasonable flexibility and accommodations for the increasingly diverse learner population. Consider any issues your learners might have in accessing required technology, including appropriate hardware and software requirements, as well as reliable internet access. Inclusion is a key determining factor in learner success.

For example, keep in mind that English may be a second or foreign language for some learners. When providing directions or explanations, use simple, professional, grammatically-correct English without idioms or slang heavily rooted in U.S. history or culture. If such language is relevant to the educational context, provide additional explanation or historical reference. In an effort to create a cohesive and safe learning environment, remind learners to be sensitive to and respectful of cultural or religious differences of the learning community.

Phase 1: Align

SECTION A — CONNECTING LEARNING OBJECTIVES AND ASSESSMENTS

Begin evaluating alignment by first examining your learning objectives to ensure that they are measurable and at the right level for your learners and the course.
Next, you’ll start to use an “alignment map” to examine whether your assessments are aligned to your course objectives. In other words, consider whether your current assessments provide learners with the opportunity to demonstrate that they have achieved the learning objectives. Each assessment should align with at least one learning objective.

You can note on your Alignment Map where there is a disconnect between objectives and assessments, which can be addressed by editing or adding an assessment and/or an objective.

QM Professional Development Options

If you need help aligning learning objectives with the assessments, consider the Connecting Learning Objectives and Assessments workshop. If you’re interested in learning more about creating quality, aligned assessments, QM offers a dedicated web conferencing workshop package to help meet your assessment goals, called Assessing Learning Remotely.

SECTION B — CONTINUING YOUR ALIGNMENT MAP: LEARNING ACTIVITIES, INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS, AND TECHNOLOGY TOOLS

Continue completing your alignment map by adding your learning activities. Learning activities are all the things that learners will do during the course to practice and work with the new information they are learning. Learning activities support learners in meeting the desired learning outcomes by allowing them to apply what they are newly learning, and receive instructor feedback before they are assessed.
Next, you’ll add your instructional materials/content and your technology/tech tools to your alignment map. Instructional materials and technology are two critical components that are tied to any online learning activity. If either or both of these components are not aligned/not supporting the given activity, then the learning activity is difficult to complete.

QM Professional Development Options

If you need help developing learning activities, QM offers the Assessing Your Learners workshop. QM also offers the Instructional Materials for Online Teaching dedicated web conferencing workshop series, which helps connect the materials to objectives and different approaches for content in the online classroom.

Phase 2: Engage

SECTION A — PROMOTE ACTIVE LEARNING AND ENGAGEMENT

Active, applied learning is vital for the online classroom, as passive learning often serves to further “distance” online learners. In the design of your activities, strive for learner engagement that supports active learning or learning by doing (application).

Active learning can incorporate interaction, which is vital to build a sense of belonging online. Learners can interact and engage with the content, with you, and with other learners. All interactions should be meaningful. Course topic or class size may impact learners’ ability to interact with one another, but learners will always interact with their instructor and course material.

As you continue your course design, determine how learners will interact with digital materials, and within a digital environment.
Choose technologies that support the forms of interactions you want your learners to participate in, but focus first on institutionally-supported technologies, so learners are assured they will have help with technology and online security.
Lastly, in this section, focus on your formative assessments and “knowledge-check” types of activities, which engage learners by providing them with opportunities to gauge their level of understanding and to receive feedback for improvement before moving on to summative assessments. Feedback can come either from you or via automated tools.

QM Professional Development Options

If you’d like to learn more about engagement and active learning online, there are several relevant web conferencing workshops in the Assessing Learning Remotely package. If you need help with developing learning activities, QM offers the Using Instructional Materials and Technology to Promote Learner Engagement and the Assessing Your Learners workshops.

SECTION B — CHOOSING AND CREATING CONTENT

Model the academic integrity that we expect from our learners. To do this, ensure instructional materials that are shared clearly identify the source material and follow copyright law.
Examine your content to ensure there is a variety of types (e.g., not just a textbook or text readings as PDFs) and that it reflects current thought in the field, when applicable.
Keep in mind that learners should be able to easily access and use all material. For example, videos should be relatively short and have clear audio and closed captions. All content, including text in the course itself, should be readable.
Finally, be proactive in meeting accessibility requirements for text, images, and multimedia. When choosing content, focus first on material that is already accessible, and then explore ways to create accessible content yourself.

QM Professional Development Options

If you need help creating accessible content or assuring your content is accessible, QM offers the Addressing Accessibility and Usability workshop as well as the Making Materials Accessible dedicated web conferencing workshop series. QM also provides the Accessibility & Usability Resource Site (AURS) as a free, public resource to help you create accessible materials. QM community members developed AURS and monitor the site's discussion forums.

SECTION C — UTILIZING TECHNOLOGY

Institutions choose, acquire, and support specific educational technologies to foster digital learning. Focus first on institutionally-supported technologies so that students have dedicated technical support, as well as protections for their privacy and data.

If your course's technology needs go beyond those that are institutionally supported, you must understand the privacy and data protections the technology has in place for students, in addition to its accessibility.

In this section, focus on ensuring that:

The course uses a variety of technology and tools.
Learners can protect their privacy.
The technologies used are accessible.
The learners can receive help to use course technology.

SECTION D — ESTABLISH PRESENCE & FACILITATE INTERACTION

The elements of Teaching, Social, and Cognitive Presence comprise the Community of Inquiry Framework (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2001), and they all begin with the design of your course.
In this section:

Create and communicate the planned interaction between you and your learners, and explain to learners how to interact with you, with peers, and with the course itself.
Design introductions for both yourself and your learners, which helps increase the feeling of "presence" in an online course.

Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2001), Critical thinking, cognitive presence, and computer conferencing in distance education. The American Journal of Distance Education, 15(1), 7-23.

QM Professional Development Options

If you need help developing presence, QM offers the Creating Presence in Your Online Course workshop.

Phase 3: Connect

SECTION A — ORGANIZING YOUR CONTENT INTO MODULES

At this point in your design, you may have completed an alignment/course map, which gives you a macro-level view of your course. Your next step is to organize all your aligned assessments, activities, and materials into smaller units of learning, commonly called “modules.” As you organize, determine the appropriate sequencing and timing of assessments, so that learners have time to receive and use your feedback prior to completing the next assessment.
Common ways to organize modules is by week or thematic unit. Modules provide learners with a comprehensive area where they can actively engage with the learning materials. activities, and assessments relevant for that specific unit of learning, while also including context and guidance from you (such as a module introduction and/or summary). This is the organizational structure that you will construct in the learning management system (LMS). Check with the appropriate office at your institution to determine if there is an LMS template that can help you get started with good navigation and links to support or other institutional resources. Begin building your course in the LMS at any point in Phase 3.
Each module has its own, discrete set of learning objectives called module objectives, which is what you will create next. What you are having learners do in each module serves as the blueprint for writing your module objectives. Writing your module objectives can serve as a final alignment “check,” as you look to the content/activity/assessment alignment within the module and write that as an objective that begins with an active or measurable verb.

Design Step 1

Bridge to Quality Action Item

Create measurable objectives for the modules/units/weeks in your course, and connect them to your course-level objectives so that students can connect what they're learning and doing to course objectives, and can track their learning as they progress through the course.

It is typically easiest to draft these after you’ve designed an individual module by examining what students will do in the activities and assessments.

The module objectives state in discrete, concise, and inclusive language what learners will be able to do by the end of that module. Writing the module objectives is a reflection of the alignment between the content and the activities/assessments you have in each learning unit. By using inclusive and descriptive language in the design of the module objectives, you provide learners with opportunities to increase their confidence and demonstrate competence by achieving the stated objectives.

Consider using a combination of narratives and diagrams to explicitly show diverse learners how the module-level learning objectives pave the way for them to achieve the course-level learning objectives. Learners whose cultures rely on and celebrate oral traditions may benefit from having this presented in an audio-visual format, for example. Taken as a whole, aligning your module objectives to your course learning objectives is the final step in completing the alignment map of your course. (If you’ve gotten to this step, well done!)

Relevant QM Higher Ed. Standard

HE SRS 2.2 | The module/unit-level learning objectives describe outcomes that are measurable and consistent with the course-level objectives.
Design Step 2

Bridge to Quality Action Item

Write learning objectives in short, easy-to-understand sentences that use common terms and avoid jargon in order to reduce learners' cognitive load. Learning objectives should be relevant and speak to the authentic richness of the cultures represented in your class.

Include the objectives in places that are easy to locate, such as the syllabus or a Start Here area.

Learners need to understand from the first day what they will be able to do with their new knowledge and skills by the end of the course.

Relevant QM Higher Ed. Standard

HE SRS 2.3 | Learning objectives are clearly stated, are learner-centered, and are prominently located in the course.

QM Professional Development Options

If you need help with developing modules, QM offers the Designing Your Online Course workshop, which enables you to create a module using an alignment map, providing a framework for organizing the modules/units/weeks of your course. The Designing Your Hybrid Course workshop is for those offering a hybrid course. QM also offers a dedicated workshop on Creating Course Maps.

SECTION B — MAKE CONNECTIONS FOR STUDENTS

In this section, make learning connections transparent, just as you would face-to-face when introducing a topic, an assessment, or an activity that asks learners to engage with specific content. Online, we often can’t tell if learners know why we’re asking them to focus their learning efforts in a particular way or if they think something is “busy work.” Learners may not understand why they are being asked to, for example, read a certain chapter or view a particular video if they don’t see the connection to doing well on an assessment or achieving a learning objective. You can make connections between different parts of the course in various ways, including text and graphics; the key is to communicate to learners how the course components are aligned with each other.

Guide your learners purposefully along the learning path you’ve designed by:

Helping them connect their use of course materials to completing learning activities.
Connecting the activities to the course objectives.

Design Step 1

Bridge to Quality Action Item

Incorporate alignment visibly into your online course by connecting what learners are reading, watching, or doing to how they will use the material for specific activities. This facilitates achievement of course objectives. Diverse learners will benefit from the use of clear, concise language when explaining the relationship; some of your students may be English Language Learners (ELL), so using simple sentence structure and providing clear information supports and empowers diverse learners in your courses. Consider including this information in an audio/video format to meet the needs of different learning preferences.

Explain each piece of material, and include it within the associated assignment prompt.

If you are using the flipped approach, remind learners of the link between materials and activities prior to beginning the activities. Alternatively, remind learners how the material they are interacting with during a synchronous session is connected with upcoming learning activities.

Relevant QM Higher Ed. Standard

HE SRS 4.2 | The relationship between the use of instructional materials in the course and completion of learning activities and assessments is clearly explained.

Emergency Remote Instruction Quick Start: Explain to your learners how the learning materials help them complete course activities and achieve the course learning objectives.

Reflect on how you begin your face-to-face class sessions, and use that to create a module/unit introduction that is text-based or a short video that you record. You can post this as an Announcement or send via email. In this Module Introduction, explain to learners how what they’re reading or watching that week connects to the course learning objectives.
Design Step 2

Bridge to Quality Action Item

Explain to your learners how the activities relate to achieving the learning objectives. This is where you can explain your instructional rationale for including each activity in the course. Again, diverse learners will benefit from the use of clear, concise, and intelligible language when explaining the relationship, ensuring linguistic accessibility.

Make this relationship clear via the layout of the module by including a course map or via announcements or module introductions — similar to how you would make connections for students in-person.

Especially if you are using the flipped approach in a hybrid or synchronous course, use class time to reinforce the connection between what learners are doing and the role the activities play in helping learners achieve the course's learning objectives.

Relevant QM Higher Ed. Standard

HE SRS 2.4 | The relationship between learning objectives, learning activities, and assessments is made clear.

Emergency Remote Instruction Quick Start: Specifically explain how each activity or assignment is related to the course objectives and how you will evaluate submitted work.

Just as you would in class, introduce an assignment by going over the instructions using text, audio, or video, providing relevant examples when useful/possible, and reminding students how the assignment is connected to learning objectives. Include clear information, whether through an assignment prompt, rubric, or other means, about how the assignment will be evaluated.

QM Professional Development Options

If you need help connecting assessments with learning objectives, QM offers the Connecting Learning Objectives and Assessments workshop.

SECTION C — ASSESSMENT CHECK

In Phase 1, you created your aligned assessment ideas/plan. Now, create the specific digital assessments, such as exam or quiz questions, discussion or journal prompts, or group activities. This is not listed as a separate step below, as you’ve already designed the plan for aligned assessments, and the creation of those assessments can happen in various ways, such as constructing exam questions or reflective journal prompts directly in the LMS, or creating scenarios that form the basis for a class discussion.

In this section, first develop instructions/prompts for those assessments to ensure learners know what to do and how they will be evaluated. Clear prompts or rubrics lessen clarifying questions from students as they are completing course assessments and are the online equivalent to discussing upcoming assignments in a face-to-face class. Remember, some of your students may be English Language Learners (ELL), so using simple sentence structure and providing clear, concise information helps to support and empower diverse learners in your courses.
It’s also time to see how work is graded, explain how learners will be evaluated, and place the grading policy in the course so learners have this information on the first day.
Lastly, you’ll take a final, holistic view of your assessments to ensure they are of various types and are scaffolded and sequenced to allow learners to "ramp up" to the appropriate level of mastery.

QM Professional Development Options

If you need help with assessments, QM offers the Assessing Learning Remotely synchronous workshop series. The Assessing Your Learners and the Connecting Learning Objectives and Assessments asynchronous workshops also help with these design decisions.

SECTION D —TELL YOUR LEARNERS HOW YOUR COURSE IS STRUCTURED & HOW TO GET HELP

In the face-to-face classroom, learners know where to sit and that the instructor will be in the front of the room. Online, the framework for how to get to the course, what to do once you arrive, how to find assignments, and how to move through the course is not readily apparent. You must make these things visible for your learners. Now that the design has been completed in the alignment map and then built in the learning management system or other digital learning environment, tell learners:

How to proceed through the course.
What the relevant course and institutional policies are.
How they can access help online.

QM Professional Development Options

If you need help designing your course to get learners started, QM offers a Design That Welcomes Your Learners workshop.