Monday, August 11, 2014

Just A Few More Common Mistakes to Avoid in Online Course Design and Development

As a follow up to my 5 Common Mistakes to Avoid in Online Course Design and Development and A Few More Common Mistakes to Avoid in Online Course Design and Development posts, I wanted to share a few more mistakes that I have been guilty of and observed higher education faculty face themselves in the online course development process.


  1. Mistake #8: Not giving yourself enough time to build your online course.  Faculty members are busy.  Whether you're a graduate teaching assistant, an adjunct instructor, or tenure-track (or non-tenure track) professor, we are continuously upholding our teaching, research, and service responsibilities resulting in becoming overwhelmed.  You may even be tempted to delay building and designing your online course; however, doing so typically rushes course creation and causes quality to decline.  This frequently occurs during a learning management system (LMS) migration period or during the summertime when faculty are teaching an online course for the first time in the upcoming fall semester. 

    My suggestion:  Begin building your course 16 weeks or more before the course start date, and establish developmental benchmarks along the way.  By beginning the course development process early, it becomes much easier to focus on course quality and devote time to other to other priorities.