When building an online program, there is a seemingly endless list of big questions that need to be answered. Among them are: What kind of program you want it to be – high tech or low tech? Professor intensive or adjunct driven? Blended learning or fully online? What kind of technology will be used to deliver course content? What about opportunities for collaboration?

Jonathan P. Mathews, assistant professor of energy and geo-environmental engineering at Penn State University, teaches a high-enrollment (more than 400 students) general education online course, Energy and the Environment. Although he has two teaching assistants, the logistics of managing such a large class would be overwhelming without implementing the following online course design and management ideas.

Blended learning, which combines face-to-face and online learning activities into a single course, has experienced tremendous growth during the past few years. A blended learning course (also called a hybrid course) can satisfy students’ need for flexibility, as well as alleviate overcrowded classrooms. However, the biggest benefit to a well-designed blended course could be a much improved teaching and learning experience.

As colleges and universities continue to expand their online course offerings, increasingly they're turning to adjuncts to help carry the load. These online instructors, many of whom work full-time in addition to their part-time teaching gig or teach online courses at multiple schools, create unique training and retention challenges. This report features strategies for ensuring distance education faculty have the necessary training and support to succeed.

Online course design is crucial to student success. It should reflect the intended learning outcomes and provide enough guidance for students to easily navigate the course without being overly rigid so as to stifle the exploratory aspects of learning, says Mary Hricko, library director and associate professor of library and media services at Kent State University Geauga Campus and Twinsburg Center.

Despite the benefits of online education, there are inevitable frustrations as well. The tools online learners need to use take time to master and don’t always behave in intuitive ways. Waiting for a response to a question, work from another learner on a collaborative project, or feedback on an assignment also can be terribly frustrating.

Rebecca Arbisi, chair of the business department at State Fair Community College in Missouri, offers the following tips for improving the quality of threaded discussions:

One of the key strengths of a distance education program also can be a weakness. While web-based learning increases dramatically the pool of potential students that you can target, the number of competitors vying for those same students increases as well.

If you’re looking to improve threaded discussions in your online courses, consider using brief video clips as discussion prompts. When carefully selected and integrated into a course, these clips can lead students to higher-order thinking and appeal to auditory and visual learning styles.