Structuring asynchronous online courses to support student success

Using Design Principles to Structure Asynchronous Online Courses for Student Success

Asynchronous online learning provides greater flexibility for students and instructors, and it can also make education accessible to more students. However, asynchronous online courses can also present challenges because students must navigate their learning more independently. Even mature adult learners may struggle if there are not explicit structures in place to guide their learning. This means that we must balance flexibility with well-defined (and carefully communicated!) parameters and structure to help all students manage their time and their efforts. 

This article provides an overview of three teaching strategies to help you design and teach online courses that will maximize the likelihood of student success by providing the right kind of structure and support. When students know how to do the work we want them to do and feel supported in doing that work, they will dig in, persist, and succeed!

Strategy 1: Provide a clear high-level structure that will help students navigate your course. 

When students enter an online course, they need to be able to move through that course easily and find the materials and assignments they need to complete their work successfully. This means that when they land on your course homepage or content page, they should see a clearly-labeled module for each learning sequence that contains all the work for that sequence in a well-defined order. This high-level organization helps ensure that students know where to locate their work each time they log in to the course. 

There are several ways that you can provide this kind of high-level structure for students.

Use a consistent naming convention for course modules that helps students understand how to locate materials. 

For example, instead of just using topic or sequence names, use identifiers like “Week 1,” “Learning Sequence 1,” or “Module 1” to orient students.

Use a consistent structure within modules. 

Students will learn how to navigate the course more easily if they have a general sense of what to expect when they enter a course module. For example, each module should contain the same areas in the same order, such as overview, content materials, discussions, and assignments. 

Create a “how to navigate this course” video and post it as an initial course announcement. 

You can use Zoom to record a guided tour of your course by using the screen share function and providing voiceover narration. This personalized overview helps students orient more quickly and also provides an initial introduction to you. It also sends the message that you care about students’ success!

Strategy 2: Provide a predictable, explicit rhythm to guide students’ work through the course. 

In a typical face-to-face class, students’ work is often driven by and structured around class time. For example, when students know that preparatory work (reading, homework, problem sets, etc.) is due by class time, they have a schedule and a set of benchmarks to guide their efforts. Similarly, the regularity of a face-to-face class meeting helps guide instructors’ preparation and decision-making. When a course is offered in an asynchronous format, we don’t have regular class meetings to guide us. This means that we need to create a predictable rhythm of work to help students (and us!) stay on track in the course. 

There are several ways to plan and communicate this rhythm for students.

Aim for learning sequences or modules of roughly the same length. 

You might find that a weekly structure makes the most sense for your goals. Alternately, you may discover that students need two weeks to complete the work of each course learning sequence. In any case, it’s important to create the same kind of pattern of work for each module. For example, students might complete this sequence of activities in each module: (1) post to a discussion board and reply to their classmates; (2) watch a short lecture and read a textbook chapter; (3) write a short response paper in which they use content from the lecture and reading to refine their initial thinking from the discussion post; (4) share their response papers in a small-group discussion and use feedback from their peers to continue developing their ideas into an argument; (5) revise their response paper and submit a final draft as an assignment. This type of explicit structure helps students know the work that is expected of them in each learning sequence so they can stay on track of their progress and their learning.

Help students manage due dates by having the same kinds of work due on the same days of the week. 

For example, you might make lectures and readings available every Monday, initial discussion posts and replies due by Tuesday, small-group discussions on Wednesday and Thursday, and response papers due by Friday. This kind of predictability helps students plan ahead and can keep them from missing important due dates.

Strategy 3: Provide frequent communication—even before the course begins—to help students manage their work. 

In a face-to-face class, we often rely on a combination of written and verbal instructions to help students navigate through a course. For example, we typically provide a syllabus with a full outline of assignments, but we may also give oral reminders in class or offer clarification of assignments or expectations as work is due. In an asynchronous environment, we don’t have those same informal opportunities to clarify due dates or expectations, and we don’t necessarily have the benefit of responding to student questions in the moment. This means that we need clear, explicit, and redundant communication that will guide students through their work for each part of the course. 

There are several ways to establish and maintain clear and effective communication that will help students be successful.

Send a “welcome letter” before the semester begins. 

Students are much more likely to be successful when they know what will be expected of them and when they understand that you care about their learning. A letter or announcement that welcomes them to your course accomplishes both of these purposes and allows you to begin establishing a relationship with your students before the course begins. An effective welcome letter will help you do three key things that prepare your students for success in your course.

1. Welcome students and describe your plan for their learning. Start your letter by letting students know that you are looking forward to working with them and that you have thoughtfully structured the course with their learning in mind. After that, include a brief description of how the course is structured, what kind of assignments they will complete each week (e.g., readings, watching videos, writing assignments, posting to discussion boards, etc.), and how they might plan that work. You should also share information about any special aspects of the course that students tend to find particularly exciting (e.g., an assignment or project that students always enjoy) to help build enthusiasm for the course.
2. Clarify what an online course requires. After providing a broad introduction, give students information that will help them understand the fully online asynchronous modality and how their experience in your course will be different from experiences they have had taking in-person and/or full semester-length courses (if you are teaching a condensed course). For example, explain to students how much time they should expect to spend each day or week on this course, that they will need to make a plan for managing their own work independently (with your guidance), and that they will need to keep up with the schedule of work in the course by adhering to deadlines rather than completing work at their own pace.
3. Seek students’ feedback. After describing your plans for students’ learning and the course modality, the letter should invite students to share their own concerns or questions. Initiating this conversation about students’ learning—and explicitly inviting students into that conversation—makes them feel like they belong before the course begins. Moreover, asking students to share their concerns helps them see that you care about them and want to help them succeed. Both these feelings are essential to students’ success in your course.

You can learn more about how to craft a strong welcome letter in CATLOE’s article on Welcoming Students to Your Asynchronous Online Course.

Create an overview of each course module that reminds students of the rhythm of their work. 

Once you have established the structure of each week of the course, you need to create a guiding document that describes that rhythm to students, including due dates and times. This should be the first item in each module in the course, and it will serve as a guide to help students complete their work. Below is an example of a module overview.