The wash-rinse-repeat model of refreshing courses each term might be a financially beneficial model for the institution, yet is it serving students the best educational experience? If all that is monitored in the pre-flight check is for broken hyperlinks and refreshed dates, who is ensuring the quality delivery? Many institutions proudly boast…

This is a design case of the development, implementation, and evaluation of an online course for nursing educators at a large southeastern college. The course teaches best practices for organizing online instruction with a focus on the Quality Matters standards. Implementation with a small group of instructors resulted in positive responses that…

The purpose of this study was to benchmark the workload of online instructional designers as third-space professionals at 4-year, public institutions. Interview data regarding design team composition, courseload, responsibilities, and decision-making processes was gathered from managers of online learning units offering a "white-glove"…

This case study explored a university faculty development seminar that prepared instructors to design and teach online courses taking place at a mid-sized liberal Arts & Sciences university in the Southeastern United States. The purpose of this study was to examine how faculty development for online teaching may influence changes in thinking…

This paper outlines the competency-linked project of a total redesign of a fully online master's program that linked every deliverable and assessment in each course with a competency model. Extensive mapping was completed and then applied to every course in the master's program over a two-year period. Graduate students' perceptions of connecting…

This paper describes the design and development of a competency model for online instructors based on literature reviews, student surveys, and other artifacts. The first development phase included a literature review centered around researched-based competencies for online instructors and existing theories used to evaluate online instructional…

Regulatory Sciences courses taught in an online asynchronous environment pose challenges for sustaining student engagement and encouraging active learning. Impediments include limited contact with the instructor and classmates, inadequate interaction with learning materials, content that can be ever-changing, and limited tools for assessing…

Individualized approaches to online course design benefit faculty in numerous ways. Using a "concierge" model approach, this paper describes the working principles and steps used in course development. The general approach directly addresses many inherent problems with instructional design processes, which often highlight discrepancies…

Three separate baseline decisions are recommended when designing an undergraduate course prior to considering any course content. The "Three S" course design decisions include determining (1) the "setting" (on-campus, online or hybrid), (2) the learning "style" (passive or active), and (3) the learning…

This article focuses on designing college courses with Design Thinking processes combined with Universal Design for Learning as a rubric to ensure your course is inclusive and provides access for students with disabilities. Creating an inclusive course allows students of all abilities to access the materials and have an equal opportunity to learn.…

This literature-based study seeks to identify best practices for adjunct faculty participation in the centralized design of online courses. Literature from 2014-June 2018 relating to faculty participation in course and curriculum design was identified through a search of the ERIC database. Following further examination, nine studies were selected…

Unlike training and professional development, hiring faculty for online teaching remains underexplored by scholars. It is imperative that faculty hiring be approached thoughtfully and strategically so that institutions can deliver quality online instruction in alignment with their missions, visions, and values. To address this need, this article…

The challenge of teaching online increases as the number of sections or courses increase in a semester. The tactics and techniques which enrich online instruction in the tradition of quality matters can be modified and adapted to the demands of multiple instructional needs during a semester. This paper addresses time management and instructional…

There are many strategies for estimating the effectiveness of instruction. Typically, most methods are based on the student evaluation. Recently a more standardized approach, Quality Matters (QM), has been developed that uses an objectives-based strategy. QM, however, does not account for the learning process, nor for the value and worth of the…

This case study describes a collaborative process by various teaching and distance support units to create and run a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) in the subject of Leadership. Whereas typical collaboration arrangements in the literature involve partnerships of various teaching and support units, the collaboration of course developer,…