Online learning needs a makeover as demand continues to grow

Online courses can become very large, and the instructional designer must assess which components can work well with 1,500 students and which won’t.

While getting its start more than three decades ago, the movement toward online or distance learning in new programs, course offerings and class sizes has accelerated exponentially since the COVID-19 pandemic. At Virginia Tech University, for instance, three percent of undergrad classes were taught online before the pandemic. By the fall of 2022, that percentage more than tripled to nearly 10 percent, and class size has grown substantially—sometimes to thousands per class.

But delivering a quality educational experience online requires much more than simply converting offline materials to online resources and uploading videos. Across the globe, higher education institutions work tirelessly to build and maintain a record of excellence for quality educational experiences, and that same effort and strategic mindset should be applied to online education.