Building Quality Online Courses: Online Course Development Partnership and Model

The authors have personally experienced the burdens of creating online courses without the assistance of trained instructional designers. Many faculty are employed in conditions where they develop online courses without the proper knowledge and training of many essential aspects that should accompany the development of an online course (e.g., design, development, learning styles, copyright, design principles, accessibility, incorporating technology, and technical skills) (Singleton et al., 2013; Speck, 2000; Wickersham et al., 2007). The authors propose and describe the use of a detailed online course development and delivery model (Outlaw & Rice, 2015) that was created to provide distance education units with a systematic approach to course development. The proposed model nourishes the partnerships between faculty and designers to improve the quality of online courses, while providing the support faculty need to successfully create online courses. The authors discuss a model that provides consistency in efforts to create efficient workflows to develop online courses.