Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Keep content current and accessible

As you add or revise materials, make sure the course remains accurate, functional, and accessible.

Review course content for:

• outdated information or examples
• broken or changed links
• inaccessible documents or media
• captions, transcripts, alt text, headings, and other
• accessibility requirements
• changes to third-party tools or technologies students are expected to use

The OCDF expects course materials to remain free of outdated information and broken links and includes accessibility expectations for documents, media, technologies, and Brightspace content.

Watch for alignment drift

Small course changes can affect the relationship between what students are expected to learn, how they practice, and how their learning is assessed.

When you add, remove, or revise instructional materials, activities, or assessments, check that:

• course and module learning objectives still reflect the intended learning
• instructional materials and practice prepare students for graded work
• assessments continue to measure the intended outcomes
• assignments remain appropriate for the level of the course

The OCDF emphasizes alignment among outcomes, learning objectives, instructional materials, activities, and assessments.

Recheck workload when the course changes

Adding one more reading, video, discussion, activity, or assignment may seem small, but those additions accumulate.

The OCDF identifies balanced and appropriate workload as an Essential Design expectation and asks faculty to consider the time students spend in direct instruction as well as on instructional materials, activities, and assessments.

When updating a course, consider the full student learning experience and ask:

• What was added?
• What was removed or replaced?
• How much time will the revised learning experience reasonably require?
• Are some weeks substantially heavier than others?
• Does the overall workload still fit the number of credits, course level, and discipline?

For online and asynchronous courses, academic engagement is not limited to scheduled class time. It can also occur through assignments, assessments, discussions, interactive instructional activities, and instructor-student interaction.

Look at the course through the student experience

Teaching a course often reveals things that were difficult to see during development.

Pay attention to:

• instructions that generate repeated questions
• places where students frequently get lost
  difficult navigation or inconsistent information
• assignments students regularly misunderstand
• points in the course where students disengage or fall behind
• unnecessary steps or barriers

The OCDF emphasizes clear organization, consistent navigation, meaningful module titles, clear instructions, and a recognizable course structure and cadence.

Use what you learn from teaching the course to make small improvements over time.

Maintain instructor presence and interaction

A well-designed online course still depends on active teaching.

As the course changes, make sure its design continues to support meaningful instructor presence through communication, guidance, feedback, and interaction with students. The OCDF includes expectations related to instructor communication, feedback, announcements, office hours, and regular interaction throughout the course.

For distance education, regular interaction should be intentional and built into the course rather than relying primarily on students to initiate contact.