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SUNY Online Exemplary Course Elements

Developing and delivering a quality course for online delivery can be intimidating, particularly if the instructor has never taken an online course as a student nor seen what is possible in the online arena.  SUNY Online has created this site to provide a sneak peek into some exemplary course elements across a variety of disciplines.

What makes an online course “exemplary”?

It’s not as difficult to create an exemplary course as you might imagine.  Exemplary courses don’t necessarily require high-end multimedia productions or lots of bells and whistles.  In fact, some exemplary courses have very little integrated technology beyond the learning management system itself!  What seems to matter most to online students are a small number of achievable course design and delivery practices.  In fact, the instructional practices highlighted below foster student learning and engagement; create a sense of community; address stated learning outcomes and objectives; and produce the largest individual effects on students’ overall course satisfaction.

“Net satisfaction (the proportion of students very or somewhat satisfied) for courses employing 0-2 of the recommended online instructional practices was 43 percent compared to 61 percent for courses using 3-5 of the practices, and 74 percent for courses using 6-8 of the practice.” (1)

Instructor Presence

  • Welcome emails, announcements, & videos
  • Emails 
  • Discussion forums 
  • Informal discussion forums
  • Welcoming, supportive, & inclusive language
  • Prompt and formative feedback, etc
  • Synchronous & asynchronous options for interaction with the faculty member

Student Support Focus

  • Orientation video
  • Welcome emails, announcements, & videos
  • Student support resources
  • Frequent check-ins
  • Use of student retention tools, such as Starfish

Meaningful Opportunities for Student Interaction

  • Group work
  • Discussion forums
  • Break-out sessions in synchronous lectures

Course Design

  • Consistent structure to course
  • Simple, clean layout with minimized text
  • Accessible course content

Learning Materials

  • Synchronous and asynchronous learning options
  • Chunked materials – course materials organized into smaller “bite-sized” segments, sequenced in a way to help students make sense of the materials
  • Built-in content relevance and mapping to course objectives/goals
  • Learning content is contextualized (WIIFM – what’s in it for me) and tied to real world examples
  • Video lecture content is contextualized (WIIFM), short (6 min recommended)
    • Contextualized – let students know what they should be looking for
    • 6 min video max for optimal attention and retention
    • Brief knowledge checks after viewing

Assessment

  • Frequent, authentic, and varied assessments that are mapped to learning objectives

Exemplary Online Course Components

Below you will see a number of courses that provide examples of the instructional practices highlighted above.  Each course video is accompanied by a list of features that promote active and engaged learning.

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