Online Learning Design for Educators

Zoom is the platform millions of educators use for live online teaching — but using it well takes more than knowing the basics. This course gives teachers and trainers a complete foundation for designing and delivering effective synchronous Zoom classes. You'll begin by selecting the right Zoom plan and configuring audio, video, and profile settings for your teaching environment. You'll then set up a safe, accessible virtual classroom by applying privacy, security, and accessibility controls suited to your learners. From there, you'll explore the engagement tools that keep learners active: polls, chat, breakout rooms, screen sharing, and annotations. A dedicated module on Zoom fatigue helps you understand why learners disengage and what you can do about it. You'll finish by integrating everything you've learned into a structured lesson plan and written facilitation guide — a practical, portfolio-ready artefact you can apply directly in your own teaching context. This course suits teachers, trainers, and educators at any level who deliver or plan to deliver live online sessions. No prior experience with Zoom or virtual teaching is required.

Multimodal content — video, audio, and infographics — makes online learning more effective. Learners retain more when information is presented across multiple formats, and this course shows you how to create it. You'll work through a systematic design process grounded in four key principles: purpose, space, time, and the instructor's role. Starting with foundational design theory, you'll move through hands-on creation of three content types: infographics, educational podcasts, and instructional videos. Tools like Canva, Venngage, and Visme are introduced to support your infographic work, and you'll hear directly from experienced practitioners through expert podcast interviews in every module. By the end of the course, you'll have created real learning resources and refined them through feedback using a structured critical friend protocol. After completing the course, you'll be able to independently design, create, and evaluate multimodal learning content using a systematic process. Rather than guessing which format to use, you'll make informed, evidence-based decisions aligned to your learners' needs — and you'll have a completed resource package to demonstrate those skills. This course is relevant to instructional designers, e-learning developers, teachers, corporate trainers, learning experience designers, and higher education faculty. The skills you build — design thinking, content creation, and iterative feedback — apply across education sectors and industries wherever online or blended learning is used. No prior design or software experience is required.