Course Design
& Development
Preparing Your Online Course
Below are a collection of research-based best practices, quality standards, and instructional strategies for online courses to foster engaged, effective, and inclusive learning experiences.
Best Practices for Online Instruction
These best practices are organized for planning your course. See how to best prepare before, during, and after the semester while providing your students with the most helpful resources.
Engagement Strategies
Good instructors identify measurable learning outcomes for their students, communicate their expectations, and regularly interact with students to monitor, support, and provide feedback on their learning progress. These strategies are effective and essential, whether you are teaching in a face-to-face classroom, in a fully online course, or in a hybrid learning environment. Learn more about these approaches by selecting one of the categories below.
Assessment Strategies
Instructors can use various assessment strategies to help measure students’ ability to master the learning outcomes. See how these strategies best describe and compare various types of assessments.
Feedback Strategies
Feedback is information provided regarding one’s performance or understanding and it can be provided by an instructor, peers, or even for oneself. Knowing what you are doing right helps solidify learning. Knowing what you have done incorrectly or insufficiently empowers you to improve. The strategies in this section should empower you to communicate effective feedback in a timely and efficient way that prompts students to use it to improve.
Jumpstart
Online Learning provides the Jumpstart Online Course Development Program to support you in making your online course a reality. Guided in your efforts, you will be provided research-based course design, professional video, and other multimedia, and training to support your future online course development efforts.
Instructor Guides
From Academic Policies, Professional Organizations, and Tools & Templates, these resources will assist instructional faculty and academic administrators in planning, designing and teaching online, hybrid and distance education.
Fostering Inclusion Online
Educational environments that promote inclusion and equity not only reflect UT’s values, but are an important component of student success and retention. These resources and strategies can help instructors create and foster inclusive online and hybrid classrooms.
Teaching STEM Online
Online teaching in STEM-related fields can provide a unique set of opportunities and challenges. These resources are geared specifically for instructors teaching STEM-related courses, and access a collection of presentations from the most recent Online STEM Day
Schedule a Consultation
Questions about teaching online or need help with course development? Our team of instructional designers and multimedia specialists can help you have a strong start!
Stay up-to-date on everything we are doing in the world of online learning.