Using the Online Course Design Checklist

To provide guidance in designing fully online courses, the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) has developed an Online Course Design Checklist (OCDC). This tool draws on learning-science research and best-practices and is intended to be used formatively—for professional growth and development—for RIT faculty, GTAs, and other instructors of record. 

There are many educational-development situations in which the Online Course Design Checklist (OCDC) could be used, including for: 

Self-review. As an instructor early in the course design process, you could: (1) pull up your draft syllabus and other materials, (2) review against each item in the checklist, (3) ask yourself how well your course matches the item; (4) in the notes field indicate whether it meets the OCDC criteria and identify several target areas for refinement. You could perform the same process a few weeks before the course launches—and/or a few weeks after the course ends, but here with more emphasis on what you might do differently next time.

Peer review. You, the instructor, could ask a faculty colleague, mentor, or other peer to review your course design at an appropriate time. Like many consultative practices, peer review of online course design typically involves three steps: 

1. Pre-review meeting of instructor and peer reviewer to discuss goals and logistics
2. The peer reviews the course design (usually as manifest in a myCourses shell) and makes notes in the OCDC.
3. Post-review meeting in which the peer reviewer debriefs their findings with the instructor to initiate a dialogue on the iterative course design process. (In an advanced version of peer-review called faculty peer coaching, participants exchange roles in a second review, then hold a post-review meeting.

Consultant’s review. CTL teaching consultants bring a neutral, cross-disciplinary, and learner-centered approach to course design; they are available by request to conduct reviews using the OCDC tool.