Course Quality Requirements
Students should be able to enter any PCC online course and find a learning experience that is clear, current, accessible, appropriately rigorous, and supported by meaningful interaction with their instructor.
Faculty are responsible for the quality of the courses they teach. PCC establishes expectations that apply to that work, and Online Learning provides a framework, tools, and support to help faculty understand and meet those expectations.
Course quality is not a one-time achievement. Courses change over time as instructors update materials, revise assignments, adopt new technologies, and respond to student needs. Maintaining quality is an ongoing part of maintaining an online course.
Not sure where your course stands?
You don’t have to review or improve your course alone.
Online Learning can help you review the course as a whole, identify areas that may need attention, and prioritize improvements based on your goals and the needs of your students.
Support can include:
- reviewing a course using the Online Course Design Framework
- identifying accessibility concerns
- examining academic engagement and workload
- identifying opportunities to strengthen instructor interaction
- reviewing alignment among outcomes, activities, and assessments
- addressing a focused course-design challenge
- planning a larger course revision
Connect with an Instructional Designer →
What does course quality include?
Quality design at PCC includes both disciplinary expertise and attention to the learning experience. PCC’s expectations include effective and inclusive course design, alignment with course goals, accessible learning environments, current instructional materials, student engagement and support, continuous improvement, and adherence to college policies and legal requirements.
For online courses, several of these expectations require particular attention because the course itself carries much of the learning experience.
A quality online course considers:
- Course organization and design – Students can understand where to begin, what to do, and how course components connect.
- Alignment – Course outcomes, learning activities, instructional materials, and assessments work together to support learning.
- Academic engagement and workload – Students have an appropriate amount and range of learning experiences for the credits they earn.
- Instructor interaction – Students experience regular and substantive interaction with their instructor throughout the course.
- Accessibility – Course content, media, activities, and technologies are accessible to students.
- Current and accurate course content – Materials, links, instructions, assignments, technologies, and course information are reviewed and maintained over time
Requirements that shape online course quality
Some elements of online course quality are not simply recommended practices. They reflect federal requirements, PCC policy, or other institutional expectations that apply to online instruction.
Regular & Substantive Interaction
Federal distance education regulations require regular and substantive interaction (RSI) between students and their instructor.
For students, this means an online course should not feel like an independent collection of readings, videos, assignments, and automatically graded activities. Instructor interaction is intentionally built into the learning experience.
Regular interaction occurs on a predictable and ongoing basis and includes monitoring student engagement and proactively interacting with students when needed. Substantive interaction supports teaching, learning, and assessment.
Learn more about Regular & Substantive Interaction →
Academic Engagement & Course Workload
PCC’s Credit Guidelines state that one credit is based on, or equivalent to, 30–36 hours of academic engagement over the term. For courses where instruction is less clearly connected to scheduled classroom time—including fully online courses—the college requires evidence of equivalency that reasonably approximates the expected student engagement.
That means workload is about more than the number of assignments in a course.
Academic engagement can include time students spend:
- engaging with instructional materials
- reading and viewing course content
- participating in discussions and interactive activities
- practicing and applying concepts
- completing assignments and projects
- taking assessments
- interacting with their instructor
- participating in synchronous learning activities
Check your course workload
A workload estimate can help identify both underload and overload and provide evidence that the overall learning experience is appropriate for the credits awarded. You do not need to calculate student workload from scratch. Online Learning provides tools that can help you create a reasonable estimate of the time students are expected to spend engaging with your course.
Digital Accessibility
Accessibility is an essential component of course quality and a legal and institutional requirement. Course content and technologies should be designed so students can access and use the learning experience, including materials delivered through D2L Brightspace and other digital platforms.
Accessibility applies to:
- D2L Brightspace course content
- documents and PDFs
- images and graphics
- presentations
- video and audio
- instructional technologies
- publisher and third-party materials
- other digital resources provided to students
Create Accessible Content →
Review the PCC Accessible Technology Policy →
Explore the ADA Web Accessibility Requirements →
Quality courses require ongoing attention
A course can meet quality expectations when it is developed and still change over time.
Adding a new reading, replacing a video, revising an assignment, changing a publisher tool, or reorganizing a module may affect more than one part of the learning experience.
For example, a course change can affect:
- alignment with course outcomes
- student workload
- accessibility
- course navigation
- instructional technology requirements
- instructor interaction
- assessment and grading
- the clarity or accuracy of course information
Does the course students experience today still reflect the quality I intend to provide?
One framework for the whole course
It can be difficult to determine how college expectations, federal requirements, accessibility standards, and online course design practices fit together.
The Online Course Design Framework (OCDF) brings these elements into one practical framework for developing, reviewing, and strengthening PCC online courses.
The framework draws from established online course-quality models and PCC requirements and organizes course design expectations into progressively more comprehensive levels. It is intended to help faculty look at the course as a complete learning experience rather than treating individual requirements separately.