The instructional design quality of a course is a critical indicator and prerequisite of the potential of the course for effective learning. The course outline is the backbone of your course and should be inline with the course concept and the grading concept. Important steps are to define learning objectives, video clips, learning materials and activating learning activities (quizzes, exercises, reflection tasks, etc.) for each thematic block and to define question types in problem sets and self-test units. For a detailed course outline you have to define learning objectives, learning materials, activating learning activities (quizzes, exercises, reflection tasks, etc.) and graded assignments for each week.

Activating learning activities

Various learning activities can improve student engagement. Elston and Morris (eMOOCs Conference Paper, 2015: Making MOOCs collaboratively: working effectively with stakeholders) described following distinctive design features for their MOOC about World War I:

• Use of animated storytelling, annotated green screen video, case studies and group discussions
• Theory and practice, reinforced by animated examples, practical exercises and online reflection
• Theory supported by detailed animations of anatomical structures, expert discussions with clinical experts
• Case studies with advice from business professionals – learner polling and entrepreneurs ‘revealing’ their business decisions, business case planning
• M&S and University case studies, learner polls and crowd sourcing activities, learner logs for innovation planning/ideas
• Learner ‘pin board’ activity to record course highlights, collating a painting exhibition and documenting a WW1 memorial.