How USU Online Builds High-Quality Courses
If you're considering an online degree, you may have wondered if the online courses you'll take will really give you the same quality of education as the same course taken on campus.
At Utah State University, we offer exceptional educational experiences regardless of where your learning takes place. Our online courses are thoughtfully designed for the online experience. This design work happens through collaboration between a learning designer and an expert USU instructor. Together, we design courses that provide the academic support, material, and resources you need to master the course content. Every online course is taught by an instructor who is an expert in their field. We select appropriate technology tools and teaching strategies to meet the unique needs of each course. Finally, we have established quality standards so you can rely on having a high-quality experience across your entire educational journey at USU Online.
Courses are designed for learning
Our online courses are not simply a recording of an in-person class or a collection of readings and assignments that have been put into Canvas. At USU Online, faculty work with online learning designers to think carefully about how students learn in an online course and how to best deliver the course content in that environment. Together, we consider what you need to learn, how you'll practice it, how you'll demonstrate what you've learned, and where you might need help along the way.
You will be able to open each course and always know where to start, what you're working toward, and what you need to do next.
Our online quality standards guide this work to ensure that every course:
- Is easy to navigate
- Has clear learning objectives
- Provides plenty of opportunities for instructor feedback
- Includes a variety of ways for students to engage with instructional materials
- Builds in chances for students to interact with the instructor and other students
- Integrates effective technology to enhance the learning environment
- Is accessible for all learners
- Promotes academic integrity
You're not alone
Taking an online course doesn't mean you will be working through the course by yourself.
Online courses at USU give you plenty of opportunities to engage with the course material, apply what you're learning, solve problems, and create new things. In short, you'll be doing more than simply memorizing information.
Given this, your instructor really matters! USU's online teaching standards emphasize regular communication from the instructor, quick responses to questions, meaningful feedback on assignments, and opportunities for students to interact with the instructor and peers.
This will look different from course to course. You might engage in a discussion with your classmates, meet with your instructor on Zoom, work collaboratively through a case study, or complete a group project. These experiences will reinforce the idea that online learning doesn't mean learning alone.
Your instructors are experts
USU Online courses are developed and taught by university faculty and instructors who bring the expertise of their disciplines to the online classroom. Those instructors work closely with our team of online learning designers to turn that expertise into engaging, effective online learning experiences.
We build partnerships where instructors know the subject, and our learning designers know how to teach that subject well online. That collaboration can help an instructor think about things they might not have considered on their own, like: Where might students get stuck? Where should students have opportunities to practice? Are there additional ways to describe a difficult concept? Can we connect what students are learning in class to the real world?
This collaboration ensures that your online courses are effective, engaging, and applicable to the real-world.
Technology makes learning easier
Your online course may use a lot of different technologies, or surprisingly few. That's by design, because we don't use technology in our online courses just because it's the latest thing or has lots of impressive features. Before integrating technology in a course, we ask whether it helps the students learn. Your course will have videos, and will include a mix of interactive activities, discussions, simulations, and other tools when they serve a clear purpose.
Accessibility is top of mind in all our course designs. Videos have captions, documents are in accessible formats, images have descriptions, courses have clear navigation, and content in Canvas is clear and readable.
A course isn't a high-quality course if students can't effectively access everything in it.
How can you recognize a quality online course?
The goal of an online course isn't to replicate the structure and activities in an in-person course. A quality online course starts with the same learning objectives as an in-person course, but it intentionally harnesses the strengths of the online environment to provide an engaging, rigorous experience with plenty of opportunities to connect with your instructor and peers.
At USU Online, we can confidently say that you will:
- Be in a course that was designed specifically for online students
- Have opportunities to apply what you are learning
- Have an instructor who is present, available, and engaged
- Receive useful feedback on your academic work
- Receive the academic and technical support you need to be successful
Where you learn might be different online, but at USU, the quality of your education won't be.