Course Design Best Practices

Good course design creates an engaging and consistent learning experience. By incorporating Course Design Best Practices, instructors create consistency throughout online courses at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, from program to program and course to course.

Students are able to easily find information in their courses without having to relearn with each course. 

Certified faculty will recognize these elements as Quality Matters standards.

For a quick reference guide, download our Online Instructor Checklist of things to do before, during, and at the end of a course. 

Best Practices:

• Moodle Standard Layout
  • Welcome Message Block 
  • Course Tour 
  • Instructor Contact Information Block
  • Announcements Forum
  • Q&A Forum
  • Getting Started Module
    • Course Syllabus
    • Course Outline
    • Information about Learner Support resources
    • Netiquette
    • Academic Honesty Policy
    • Introduction Forum/Assignment 
    • Student instructions for EduTools
• Learning Objectives
  • Measurable Course Objectives
  • Measurable Module Objectives
  • Alignment of objectives with instructional materials, learning activities, and assessments
• Accessibility
  • Provide closed captioning and/or transcripts for videos.
  • Provide for images and graphs.
  • Use PDFs that are selectable and searchable.
  • Don't rely on text colors to convey meaning. 
  • Not relying on text colors alone to convey meaning
  • Avoid underlined text, except for hyperlinks. 
  • Provide time accomodations.
• Activity Tracking
• Rubrics
• Instructional Materials
  • EduTools
  • Multimedia
  • Moodle Features
  • Microlectures