Online Development Steps

Online Development Steps

Outline of Steps for Online Development

This page highlights the main steps to get a course or programme online.  If you have a programme or a course which you wish to go online, you should aim to follow these steps.  This diagram groups these steps into stages, starting with Design followed by Development, Quality Assurance and Delivery.

Course Development Process diagram

The sections below detail what action should be taken in the Design stage, who to contact and what to do next.  

Programme Development Process

If you have a programme or a course which you wish to go online, you should aim to follow these steps.

  1. Identify the programme/course to go online
  2. Discuss with relevant people within your School
    • Gain approval from your Head of School
  3. Contact your School Marketing Representative regarding the viability of your programme/course going online and identification of potential students
  4. Write a business case (if a programme, no requirement if a stand alone course)
  5. Arrange a programme review meeting to:
    • Discuss your programme ethos, aims and learning outcomes
    • Identify key personnel involved in going online (i.e. the programme team)
    • Course lists, titles, credit, etc
    • Integrate relevant assessments throughout the programme
Course Development Process
  1. Develop a storyboard for each course
    • Similar to the programme review process
    • Identifying learning outcomes, topics, activities and assessments
  2. Discuss requirements with Centre for Academic Development (who can facilitate above programme review and storyboard sessions)
  3. Complete the relevant forms/process on the Curriculum Management System
  4. Once your proposal has been approved to go online please ensure the following are aware of the new programme/course
  5. Create a project plan, for example work back from the date you wish to go online
  6. Have regular meetings and set a deadline
1. Proposal / Initial Idea

If you have a great idea for an online programme, course or short continuing development course, ensure key teams are aware of your idea:

  1. Discuss with your School, for example your Head of School or Director of Education, to make them aware of your proposal
  2. Make contact with your School Marketing Officer, to determine the market potential for the new offering
  3. Complete the necessary paperwork, by contacting the Programme Management Committee (PMC)
    1. If your proposal is a full programme, and is accepted at PMC the next step is submission to the Quality Assurance Committee (QAC) 
  4. Once PMC (and QAC if applicable) accept your course the next step is to complete the Curriculum Management System to get a course code created
2. Design

Whilst waiting for approval from PMC you should make contact with:

  1. The Online Education Team to inform them of your proposal and they can give you the appropriate forms to complete, so your proposal has a placeholder on the system and On-Demand site

Bring your team together to plan your course and ensure you are adequately prepared

  1. Centre for Academic Development, to help you plan and design your course or programme, focussing upon creating an interactive of the following components
    1. Course name/title
    2. Identifying students
    3. Course description and ethos
    4. Think about constructive alignment, which includes:
      1. Intended Learning Outcomes
      2. Topics and themes
      3. Assessment
  2. Look for examples of innovation and good practice
  3. Consider if your course will be always-on
  4. Complete the recommended Digital Accessibility online training course
  5. eLearning team can create a test course area on MyAberdeen whilst waiting for the course code
  6. Enrol staff members onto your course area
  7. Consider if you will release all the course material at once, or by conditional release
  8. Decide if you will meet students online using Collaborate or MS Teams
  9. Get up-to-date with learning technology in eLearning workshops or visit our Toolkits

 

3. Develop

Develop your learning materials and review your content:

  1. A course area will be created on MyAberdeen, with the newly generated course code
  2. Ensure you update your profile page on MyAberdeen and add a recent photograph
  3. Select your course banner and consider using the same image as the On-Demand store
  4. Generate learning modules to match your storyboard and select images
  5. Record a welcome video and mini lectures on Panopto, providing captions
  6. Develop rich Ultra documents that include multi-media (text, links, images, and video)
  7. Share your reading list with the library and label core/additional reading
  8. Create an engaging activity for each topic (discussions, journals, or groupwork)
  9. Develop formative assessment in each course (such as tests)
  10. Create a variety of low stakes summative assessments that are scalable
  11. Check your course for consistency and accessibility
  12. Use the Student Preview feature to check over your material and activities
  13. Ask a colleague to review the course area
  14. Let the Online Education Team and the eLearning team know that you are ready to launch the course
4. Deliver

Guide your students as they progress through your course, carefully thinking about how you will deliver and engage your students:

  1. Open your course area to students on time
  2. Post a welcome announcement
  3. Consider scheduling weekly announcements to guide students
  4. Provide students with an overview of your course and how to get started
  5. Provide students with a course guide
  6. Share the etiquette guide with students
  7. Consider facilitating an ice-breaker activity with students
  8. Encourage students to post questions about the course to discussion boards
  9. Allow students access to assessment information up-front
  10. Monitor student engagement and follow-up with students not accessing the course
  11. Provide feedback from formative assessments
  12. Consider using a grading rubric to provide consistency
5. Monitor and Evaluate

Take a step back to reflect upon and evaluate your success

  1. Consider course feedback from students
  2. Share your experience with colleagues via the Sharing Online Experience events
  3. Check and refine guidance / learning material on a regular basis
  4. Use one of our checklists to help you review your online material