The Intermediate Online Course Design Certificate is designed to help faculty take engagement in their online courses to the next level through the integration of collaborative learning opportunities for their students. Faculty pursuing this certificate will learn about the benefits of collaborative learning, how to set students up for success with collaborative learning, identify types of collaborative learning that would be effective in their courses, and design and develop collaborative learning activities to be integrated into their current online courses.
Below you will learn about the certificate requirements, how to enroll in the certificate and associated offerings, how to track your progress, and how your successful completion of the certificate is recognized.
Certificate Requirements
The Intermediate Online Course Design Certificate requires the completion of the following:
- Prerequisite: Basic Online Course Design Certificate
- Designing Collaborative Online Learning Environments course
- Intermediate Online Course Design Experience
- Five credits of elective activities
Read below to learn more about each of the requirements.
Designing Collaborative Online Learning Environments course
Collaboration can be an effective way to engage students with the material in a way that they can both learn and take valuable skills into their work environments. While collaborative work may exist in your classes, it may not be formally structured. This course will explore the benefits of collaboration, help you support students so that collaboration is effective, and provide tools and activities that work well in collaborative environments. You will learn ways that you can purposefully incorporate collaboration into your courses and brainstorm ways to transform your current course activities into collaborative activities that engage students and instructors.
The time commitment for this 2-week asynchronous course is approximately 5-6 hours per week. Participants will experience an online course from the student perspective while interacting with other faculty participants. The course will be facilitated by eCampus Online Faculty Associates. Participants may be eligible for a $250 stipend upon completion.
Intermediate Online Course Design Experience
Prerequisite: Designing Collaborative Online Learning Environments course
This two-week course builds upon the Designing Collaborative Online Learning Environments course that you’ve completed previously. The goal of this course is for participants to take one of the collaborative learning activity ideas that they brainstormed at the end of the Designing Collaborative Online Learning Environments course and turn it into an actual assignment for their online students in Canvas. Once this course is complete, participants will have a working assignment that they can integrate immediately into one of their online Canvas courses.
Five credits of elective activities
The final requirement for this certificate is to complete five credits of elective activities. Elective activities include the following:
Webinars (1-credit) – These are one-hour live sessions in Zoom facilitated by a variety of faculty associates and experts in specific areas from across campus. Webinars are recorded and participants who attended the session have access to the recording, slidedeck, and additional resources after the sessions via a Canvas site that holds the webinar.
Seminars (2-credits) – These are week-long asynchronous mini-courses that provide participants an opportunity to learn how to improve a specific aspect of their online course and teaching. Seminars challenge participants to apply what they learn to improve one of their online courses. Lessons, resources and activities are accessed through the seminar’s Canvas site.
Communities of Practices (3-credits) – Communities of practice (CoP) allow a small group of faculty to meet every-other week throughout a semester (for about 8 meetings) to discuss a specific area of online teaching. Facilitators and guest speakers provide insightful materials to help center the discussions while faculty share their insights and experiences with each other.
Enrolling, Tracking, and Completing Certificates
To enroll in this certificate, go to the eCampus group page in CampusGroups (be sure to log in) and locate the Join Sub-Groups area at the bottom-right corner of the page. Click the relevant checkbox for this certificate to enroll in it. You can then view the requirements for the certificate (as described above) by clicking on Home, then My Activity, then My Checklists.Â
You can enroll in currently scheduled offerings for this certificate, as described above, on our eCampus Faculty Development Event page in CampusGroups. Go to the Event Page, locate the required offerings, and click register. Make sure you are logged in to CampusGroups to see all events.
If a required course for the certificate is not listed, that means it has already been offered this semester. You can contact onlinefacultydevelopment@boisestate.edu to learn when the next offering will be. In the meantime, you are encouraged to participate in elective activities to begin working towards the certificate.
After you complete a course or elective activities for a certificate, your progress will be reflected in CampusGroups. You can view your progress by clicking on the Home button in CampusGroups, and then in the main menu selecting My Activity, then My Checklists.
Updates to the progress can take up to one week to be reflected after completing an activity. If you have a question about your progress, please reach out to onlinefacultydevelopment@boisestate.edu.
Once you complete the final activity for a certificate, you will be notified by the eCampus Faculty Development team. You will then receive an email with a certificate of completion as an attachment. Your achievement of the certificate will then be announced in an upcoming eCampus Update Newsletter. Prior to announcing it in the newsletter, you will be offered the opportunity to opt-out of the announcement.
In addition to your achievement being recognized with a certificate and the announcement in the eCampus Update newsletter, your completion of courses and activities will also be reported to Faculty 180, where appropriate, a tool at Boise State for faculty to collect, organize, and display their research, teaching and service data for the purposes of annual reviews, promotion and tenure.
Once you complete the Basic Online Course Design Certificate, you will be qualified to continue on to the Intermediate Online Course Design Certificate.
Learn more about the Advanced Online Course Design Certificate