Online Course Production
We offer flexible, high-impact course production options designed to meet faculty where they are—whether you’re building a new online course from the ground up, refreshing an existing one, or planning a new program. With pathways ranging from full 15-week development cohorts to fast-paced bootcamps and refreshes of existing courses, our team of award-winning instructional designers and media specialists will guide you every step of the way.
In all of our development offerings, we do as much for you as we can. We understand that you’re busy, and we’re here to partner with you to make the load of online course development as easy as possible.
NOTE: Faculty SMEs for the various course development options are recruited and selected by the School of Professional Studies in collaboration with programs and departments. Please complete the interest form if you would like more information.
How Can We Help?
We have two main development tracks: White glove course development for newly online or brand new courses, or various processes built specifically to meet you where you are with existing online courses.
Newly Online or Brand New Courses:
| Option | Best For | Duration | Faculty Time Commitment |
| White Glove Course Development | Complete build of a brand new course, or a newly online course. | 15 weeks | 2-3 hours a week |
| White Glove Course Development – Accelerated | Complete build of a brand new course, or a newly online course where the faculty or department wants or needs to go faster. | 8 weeks | 4-6 hours a week |
White Glove Course Development
The white glove course development process is a nationally recognized, award-winning stipended collaborative partnership with the faculty member serving as a subject matter expert (SME) and the instructional designer (ID) as the online learning expert and project manager. Our white glove development process is available in the regular 15-week semester term or an accelerated part of term option.
White glove course development is encouraged specifically for courses that have never been taught online or do not yet exist at UNC Charlotte.
Why “white glove”? Because our goal is to do as much of the required work for course development for you.
Our guiding principle: We do as much as we can for you as possible.
This can include, but isn’t limited to:
- Drafting learning content, weekly overview guides, objectives, assessments, and activities
- Building out all content, pages, and modules in Canvas
- Remediating content for accessibility
- Converting PPTS to interactive eLearning activities
- Drafting, scripting, and managing the development of instructional media
- Creating scenarios and simulations
- Setting due dates, assignment settings, and completing the gradebook setup
Build once, deploy everwhere: When developing a course for one term length, we will also offer additional term length builds as a bonus. This ensures that you have the same class and content available for multiple terms.
The majority of our faculty SMEs report spending 2-5 hours per week during the process. This includes regularly scheduled meetings, drafting course content, recording instructional content in our state-of-the-art studio, consulting with the instructional designer on the look and feel of the course, and adjusting course pacing.
Our white glove course development process includes extensive media development to take your course to the next level.
Want to go faster?
Our accelerated white glove course development process is the same as our full-term development process, but we move through course development in half the time. The accelerated timeframe for this process is an opt-in option, not one prescribed by the School of Professional Studies.
Existing Online Courses
| Option | Best For | Duration | Faculty Time Commitment |
| Online Course Design Bootcamp | Faculty with an existing online course needing updates to upgrade course content and navigation. | 3 weeks | 7 hours a week |
| Course Refresh | Faculty with an existing online course needing specific updates to look and feel, assessments, or course pacing. When possible, we will complete the draft of this for your approval to minimize your workload. | 4-8 weeks | 0-8 hours |
| Course Feedback | Existing online courses | 1-2 weeks | None |
Online Course Design Bootcamp
Bootcamps are available to departments and programs with existing online courses and can be tailored to fit a program’s individual needs. Our goal with these custom Bootcamps is to meet you where you are. We’ll do as much as we can for you within your availability and customize the program to your departmental needs.
Our regularly scheduled Bootcamp is a stipended development process that typically runs in the Spring semester and consists of two phases. Phase I is a full-day event where we discuss what you need to be successful as a faculty, current trends in online learning, and the unique needs of online students. Phase II is online for three weeks, to take your course even further with the hands-on assistance of instructional designers. Phase II is a mix of synchronous online Zoom meetings and asynchronous guided course design work. The goal of Phase II is to make a positive impact on student experience in your online course.
As a bonus for signing up, you’ll be provided with our Canvas visual design tool, Design Plus, to use in all of your classes to make them look better than ever. Not only does Design Plus help your classes look amazing, but it also makes it easier and faster to build your class.
During the Bootcamp, you will be placed into groups and assigned an instructional designer. You will receive a report that provides insights for possible course enhancements.
For me, the Bootcamp was NOT a professional development opportunity. Rather, it was an objective, non-judgmental look at my teaching with ideas for improvements. I use the word improvements; however, I view the Bootcamp experience as more of a reflective opportunity to create fresh excitement that follows best practices, while meeting today’s learners with updated tools and strategies. I would be crazy not to take advantage of the help being offered to me in such a fun, creative, and friendly setting.
Jason Karp, College of Computing and Informatics.
Course Refresh
A course refresh consists of online courses or programs previously developed in collaboration with a faculty member and instructional designer after Fall 2020. A course is automatically considered for a refresh three (3) years after the original development. Three years after an online course has been developed, the Digital Learning Production Team recommends courses for a refresh. This process ensures that courses are kept up-to-date with the latest content changes, online best practices, and technology.
There are two types of course refreshes:
- Course Restoration: Course improvements are needed due to a lack of student engagement, confusing content, and/or misalignment between the original course and the current live version. The instructional designer will complete all changes in Canvas in collaboration with faculty consultation. This is a stipended process.
- Course Modernization: Data analysis and conversations with faculty show that the course is successful. The course is reviewed for accessibility and opportunities for media improvement. The new template is applied, but no other content is changed. An instructional designer makes these changes with faculty approval. The goal is zero work from the faculty. No stipend is included in this work.
The course refresh type is determined and recommended by an instructional designer on the Digital Learning Course Production Team after a review of the course.
Course Feedback
Utilizing OLC’s new Quality Scorecard, we can provide feedback on existing online courses with targeted areas for revision. This unstipended process focuses input on areas of highest student impact in online classes as well as areas for revision that can have a positive impact on faculty grading load and online course management and facilitation.
Interested in Learning More?
If you’re interested in working with us on your online course or your online program, please submit a request via our interest form, and we’ll get back to you!