Five stages of online course design: Taking the grief out of converting courses for online delivery

Abstract

The burgeoning online delivery of higher education requires support and resourcing to be successfully implemented. In this paper, we report on the initial design and development of a professional learning module intended to guide academics when building quality online courses through a five-stage framework. The framework and resulting training module were developed in response to the growing demand on academics to convert their face-to-face courses to online offerings. This accelerating trend to move online often exceeds the capacity of allocated university course development resources (based locally or centrally as development units or specialised roles). It is for this reason a streamlined approach is needed to provide alternative support to academics that alleviates the pressure on these specialised support roles. The module developed also provides an example of how professional learning can be tailored to meet strategic university policies while delivering on quality products that align with everyday academic processes.