Welcome to the Intermediate Online Course Design Certificate!
In the Basic Online Course Design Certificate, faculty learn how to build online coures in Canvas that engage learners and encourage interaction. The Intermediate Online Teaching 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.
Below you will learn more about how to enroll in the certificate requirements and what they involve.
Overview of Certificate Requirements
The Intermediate Online Teaching Certificate requires the completion of the following:
- Designing Collaborative Online Learning Environments Course
- Crafting Collaborative Learning Activities Project
- Five credits of elective activities
Read below to learn more about each of the requirements.
Enroll in Faculty Development Offerings
You can enroll in currently scheduled offerings (described below) on our eCampus Faculty Development Event page in CampusGroups.
If a course described below 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.
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 help you to see the benefits of collaboration, help you support students so that collaboration is effective, and provide you with tools and activities that work well in collaborative environments. We will give you some ideas of how you can purposefully incorporate collaboration into your courses and ask you to brainstorm ways you could 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. The course will be facilitated by eCampus Online Faculty Associates. Participants may be eligible for a $250 stipend upon completion.
*Prerequisite: Completion of the Basic Online Course Design Certificate.
Crafting Collaborative Learning Activities Project
The Crafting Collaborative Learning Activities Project is intended to help faculty craft collaborative learning opportunities for their students in their online course. Throughout the 2-week project, faculty will select a collaborative learning strategy to design and implement in an existing online course. This includes, writing detailed student-facing instructions that scaffold learning, sourcing materials to support the learning activity, selecting assessment and evaluation strategies, and building out essential elements of the assignment in Canvas. Templates are provided to help support the design and development of the collaborative learning activity.
The time commitment for this 2-week asynchronous course is approximately 5-6 hours per week. The course will be facilitated by eCampus Online Faculty Associates. Participants may be eligible for a $250 stipend upon completion.
*Prerequisite: Completion of the Designing Collaborative Online Learning Environments Course.
Five credits of elective activities
The final requirement for this certificate is the requirement to complete five credits of elective activities. Elective activities include the following:
Webinars (1-credit)Â – These are one-hour live sessions in Zoom facilitated by a variety of faculty associates and experts in specific areas from across campus. Once you enroll in a webinar, you will automatically be enrolled in a Canvas site which houses the webinars content and links to the live Zoom session. Webinars are recorded and those participants who attended the session have access to the recording, slidedeck, and additional resources after the sessions via the 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 and then share their work with seminar peers and the facilitator for feedback. Using feedback, participants further refine their course improvement and submit it for final feedback to the seminar facilitator. Resources and activities are accessed through the seminar’s Canvas site.
Communities of Practices (3-credits)Â – 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 provide insightful materials to help center the discussions while faculty share their insights and experiences with each other. Specialists are also invited to speak to the CoP and have roundtable discussions on thematic topics related to the topic. At the end of the CoP, participants are asked to submit a reflection on their learning.
Tracking Your Progress
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 your profile picture in CampusGroups, and then selecting My Checklists in the main menu. 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 report, you can add comments to it and tag anthonysaba@boisestate.edu in the comment. You can also reach out via email as well.
View an Example Image of a Progress Page
Completing a Certificate
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.
Continuing Your Learning
Once you complete the Intermediate Online Course Design Certificate, you will be qualified to continue on to the Advanced Online Course Design Certificate*.
Learn more about the Advanced Online Course Design Certificate