A set of eight core principles governing the design and delivery of online courses was approved by the Faculty Senate in February 2008. The overarching principle governing this work is that all course elements (objectives, learning activities, interactions, instructional materials, technologies, and assessments) work together to ensure that students achieve the desired learning outcomes and that an online course is equivalent in quality and academic rigor as a well-executed face-to-face course. Read more.
Teaching an online course differs in significant ways from teaching a face-to-face course. Beyond a greater use of technology, a critical difference is a shift in the instructor's role from a lecturer to a facilitator of learning. Successful online instructors believe that students can learn just as much from an online course as they can from a face-to-face course. Read more.
The walls by which face-to-face courses are physically bounded don't exist in the online environment. While this seems obvious enough to warrant dismissal, it has important instructional design implications. With access to information on the course topic just an Internet search away for students, you become one of many experts with whom they will interact. Providing students with content alone won't do; they require active participation in the learning process. Discourse is the primary means of promoting learning. In fact, some authors contend that in an online course, content is a verb. Read more.
