Montclair State University offers many online degree programs and certificates. Check out Montclair State Online for the latest information on new programs and student success stories. Our online programs rank among some of the top in the nation in the U.S. News & World Report 2022 Best Online Programs rankings!
The ITDS group serves as a partner to provide course design and faculty development services to ensure Montclair’s online program courses are designed and delivered to meet high standards of quality. Whether a program consists of a few courses to earn a certificate or a full sequence of courses to earn a Bachelor or Master’s degree, ITDS’ instructional designers help design and develop all courses in a close collaboration with faculty members.
Online Program Development Process
When a program is identified and approved to be delivered online, the curriculum and their initial delivery schedules (semester or term-based), along with the names of the course content developing faculty members, should be shared with ITDS via Dr. Yanling Sun.
ITDS will then create a course design project plan for the program. Each course developing faculty member will be partnered with an instructional designer who they will work with throughout the course design process. To ensure on-time delivery, courses should be designed two semesters prior to their first offering dates. For example, new online programs launching in the Fall semester would involve developing the courses the previous Spring.
The process generally follows the phases detailed below. A transcript of the infographic, including the full process, is available for download.
Course Design Services
The course design services provided by ITDS involve close collaboration with faculty members. This includes, but is not limited to:
- Ensuring learning objectives for each course and module are well articulated
- Ensuring learning objectives, learning activities and course content are well aligned
- Suggesting appropriate online teaching strategies to engage students
- Promoting and helping faculty members develop a community of inquiry by adopting 3-way online interactions between faculty members, students and content
- Making sound recommendations for a variety of assessment practices
- Advocating for and integrating effective instructional technologies to enhance teaching and learning
- Assisting faculty members in the creation of high-quality video in our professional studio and editing facilities as needed
- Refining and detail the syllabus for each course upon communication with faculty
- Following principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL)
- Using the Montclair course design pedagogical model (OCIA) to apply pedagogical alignment, strengthen online interactions, and develop learning assessments
- Using a well-designed course template customized for each program so that the courses under the program have a similar look and feel
- Using emerging course design technologies to enhance visual presentation and learning navigation in each course
The ITDS instructional design team also assists each individual academic department/program with developing program-specific guidelines (as needed by a program) for faculty members teaching online program courses. Faculty members who are assigned to design and/or teach online courses for the first time should complete the Empowering Online Teaching and Learning course and Introduction to Canvas workshop offered through ITDS.
Model Course
Our course templates are customized for each program so that the courses under the program have a similar look and feel. Our course design model, OCIA, includes pedagogical alignment between content, interaction, and assessments.
Here’s an example course:
Click on an image below to enlarge photo.
This is an example of a Home Page. The content is fully customizable, allowing you to provide your students with an introduction to the course along with an overview of the content that will be covered in the modules themselves.
In this screenshot, we have an example of a Syllabus page. Content is chunked into rows with alternating background colors to increase legibility and highlight different aspects of the course.
This screenshots showcases our OCIA Model that is used in our course design frameworks.
In this example orientation page, we have three content blocks: an introduction, the learning objectives for the module, and this week’s requirements.
In this example Content page, we have two content blocks: the course materials and readings, and the video content for the current week’s module.
