Inheriting an Online Course

Over the course of your teaching career, you may inherit an online course developed by another faculty member. While such a situation can offer many advantages, it can also provoke many questions and pose significant challenges. Inheriting a complete course with materials and assessments already in place can simplify and streamline some aspects of instruction, but it can be difficult to identify where to start and what to prioritize as you begin engaging with the course. This blog outlines a four-phase process that can lead to a successful transition.

Depending on the specifics of a particular course transition, you may have relatively little advance notice from your institution. A compressed timeline can induce a sense of urgency to access and update the course space as quickly as possible. Regardless of the timeline for your course transition, however, we recommend completing the following preparatory steps prior to engaging with the course itself as they facilitate strategic allocation of time and energy.

A critical first step in the preparation phase is to clarify the extent of your course engagement with your institution. For online courses in particular, the expectations for your engagement may differ from those of face-to-face courses in your teaching load. Depending on the history and current state of the program and the specific course, the expectation may be that you use all the course structures and contents as they are currently presented. Alternatively, you may be asked or given the option to make updates to particular aspects of a course, or even the course as a whole.

Relatedly, you will want to gather as much information about the program as you can if it is not one in which you have previously taught. Courses within a program may share many common elements or standard features to provide a consistent student experience. Having a list of such elements or features is essential for understanding the design of your course.

As a final step in the preparation phase, you will also want to gather information about the course itself by addressing questions such as:

• When was the course developed?
• To what extent has the course been modified since its initial development?
• How many times has it been taught (if at all)?
• If the course has been taught before, what have students shared in course evaluations?
• What information, if any, is available from prior instructors?

Gathering answers to these questions can help you progress through subsequent phases of the course transition process with confidence.

Once you have completed preparatory information gathering, you can turn your attention to the course itself. The discovery phase involves actively exploring your new course to become familiar with its specific structures and contents. In this phase, it is essential to address the following questions:

• How is the course organized?
• Where and how is key course information presented?
• What are the key topics and sub-topics and how are they presented to students?
• What are the course- and module-level learning objectives?
• What kinds of assessments are included and how are they structured?
• How do the course- and module-level learning objectives map to the course assessments?

Addressing these questions will likely require a detailed review of the course. As you complete your review, it can be helpful to take the perspectives of both student and instructor. Doing so will help you prepare for supporting student success during the term.

While the questions listed in this section are essential to address for any course transition, they are especially important if you will be making updates to the course. If the information you wish to update appears in more than one place or is interconnected with other contents, the scope of the update will likely be larger than it might initially seem. Developing a thorough understanding of the structure and content landscape of your new course before making any updates helps ensure that you can make informed choices and avoid introducing errors or inconsistencies.

Once your review of the course is complete, you can then begin aligning the course space per the engagement details clarified in the preparation phase. That is, if the expectation for your engagement is to use the current course content, you can turn your attention to how you will facilitate the course, support students, and augment the existing content. For example, you might develop announcements to post over the course of the term that provide guidance or suggestions for engaging with the course materials, reminders of key deadlines, or supporting resources. Depending on the standards set forth for your program, you may also be required or have the option to host synchronous sessions. Now that you have reviewed the course in full, you can plan the timing and contents of such sessions to fit with the course structure. You can also plan out when and how you will provide feedback to students and determine a schedule for virtual office hours. Announcements, synchronous sessions as applicable, and other forms of communication with students can also allow you to infuse more of your perspective and expertise into the course. Sharing stories, articles, or other materials of your choosing can augment the content provided in the course and bolster student engagement.

If your course engagement involves making updates, you will want to plan in accordance with the timeline for the next run of your course. If your course is scheduled to run shortly after the transition was initiated, it may be most prudent to teach the course in its current state and complete updates after the term ends. Provided that such an approach aligns with the specifics of your course engagement, holding on updates can be particularly advantageous as doing so allows you to gather additional data and build deeper, first-hand knowledge of the course.

If there is a lengthy period of time between the course transition and its next run, you might still consider waiting until after the term ends to pursue substantive updates so as to capitalize on insights gained from teaching. That said, there may also be situations in which making updates prior to teaching would be preferable or even necessary. If you elect or need to make updates before the first run of the course, it can be helpful to keep a running log of your changes and use a checklist to help ensure that they are fully carried through in the course structure. If, for example, you make a substantive update to an assignment page, you’ll want to identify each place in the course that contains information about this assignment and track your progress on updating each. We also recommend reviewing your updates from the student perspective to ensure that they read and function as intended.

The teaching phase of a course transition provides the most in-depth experience. As the course progresses, you can gather new information about the course directly through requests for student feedback and indirectly as you interact with students and grade assignments.

As you teach, you might notice aspects of the course you would like to update. While addressing errors in a course such as broken links or incorrect assignment settings is certainly beneficial, implementing large-scale updates during the term is inadvisable as they can cause confusion for students and impede established workflows. Instead, we recommend utilizing course communication tools such as announcements to provide guidance, suggestions, and support to students. We also recommend taking notes on potential updates you have identified so that you can adjust the course as appropriate before its next run.

Finally, consider any existing course documentation for instructors that you reviewed in earlier phases. Bolstering that documentation with your experiences and observations during the term can help support continued course success.

Inheriting a course can present unique challenges and opportunities. The four-phase process outlined here can serve as a roadmap for navigating a course transition, with the order and contents of each phase designed to promote success for faculty and students alike.