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Course Design for Rapidly Moving Your Course Online

Latest Updates

Western is offering a variety of options to help faculty and teaching assistants as they move courses online.

Now available: The ABC Online Course Design Workshop will help you with rapid online course development. This workshop is suitable for instructors looking to shift an in-person course to online. Leave the workshop with a course storyboard and plans for next steps.

Complete the workshop independently online (Available now!) or in a facilitated zoom session.

New: The Online Course Design section provides a series of resources that moves beyond using OWL tools to focus on key considerations, techniques, and approaches for online teaching and learning.

Six pathways for online course design are covered, including:

• How Online Learners Learn
• Designing to Meet Course Learning Outcomes
• Organizing Course Content
• Facilitating Online Learning
• Designing for Accessibility in Online Learning
• Choosing and Providing Access to Course Readings

Drop in Q&A sessions for some of these pathways are also available for you to ask questions and explore the ideas further after you've viewed the videos.

Newest: Open Instructional Skills Workshop Online - Due to popular demand we have launched a compressed, self-guided version of our Instructional Skills Workshop Online called Open ISWO (click this link to join the OWL site).

Join the site and complete the lessons at your own pace. Lessons include Building Community, Building Lessons, and Putting Theory into Practice.

On This Site

This site features the following sections:

• ABC Online Course Design Workshop: This workshop is suitable for instructors looking to shift an in-person course to online. There are two parts: Part 1: Pre-workshop Activities and Part 2: Independent Story Boarding (Asynchronous Option or Synchronous Option)
• Online Course Design: The six pathways covered are: How Online Learners Learn, Designing to Meet Course Learning Outcomes, Organizing Course Content, Facilitating Online Learning, Accessibility, and Choosing and Providing Access to Course Readings
• Student Assessment: This section covers Planning for successful student assessments (including final assessments), possible Digital Assessment Formats, Alternative Assessment Ideas, and a note on Accessible Assessments.
• Choose an eLearning Tool: This is an external link to the "Achieve Specific Outcomes" section of the eLearning toolkit. The elearning toolkit is a resource that allows you to find eLearning tools that fit with your intended outcomes as well as compare tools on several different measures.
• One-on-One consultations: Information on how to contact the Instructional Technology Resource Centre for individualized help putting your course online.
• FAQs: Frequently asked questions about rapidly putting your course online, including questions about accessibility for tests and assignments in OWL.
• eLearning in the CTL: The former elearning section of the CTL site before the focus turned to putting courses online rapidly.

Instructor Recommendations

• Keep your course site simple.
• Avoid livestreaming lectures. These are globally shared services that will be experiencing increased demand across institutions and this may result in decreased performance.
• Focus on sharing pre-created course content (e.g., Documents, pre-recorded lectures PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, weblinks) instead of live content.

Finding Help