Online Education Hub

Understanding who your potential students are and what they need is a vital first step to preparing a robust business case to model cost, revenue and the sustainability of a course. This means: 

• Finding out where your potential prospective students are and whether there is a demand for your course 

• Finding out what other educational providers are already doing in your space 

• Profiling your potential students to understand their motivations and key problems. 

Student needs case studies, guides and tools 

Designing a course which uses the best practices for online learning will ensure you create a contemporary student experience that showcases Oxford’s distinctive brand, going beyond a repository of teaching resources. This means:  

• Implementing best practices for online teaching through a quality standards framework 

• Embedding digital pedagogy, curriculum design and activity design into your course, for example via the Online Education Hub’s Learning Design workshop 

• Using pre-vetted partners who can work with you to design your course. 

Course design case studies, guides and tools 

This is where all the planning comes to life and the course is built, in your platform of choice. Producing videos, interactives, custom graphics and a range of other authentic media and populating a learning management system can be a resource-intensive activity, but there are several options that can ease the process, including:  

• Working with a design, media and systems specialist that can create a professional student experience in a digital environment 

• Choosing platform partners including Canvas and course aggregators such as EdX, GetSmarter and Coursera, depending on your course needs 

• Ensuring your course follows best practice for online learning and meets the Online Education Hub’s quality assurance framework. 

Course development case studies, guides and tools 

Unfortunately, "Build it and they will come" does not always work! To get course enrolments, you need to build awareness and generate interest and applications. This is where marketing efforts come in. And for online courses, your pool of potential learners is global. You could consider: 

• Using the Hub’s pre-vetted Digital Marketing partner to help you reach the right students, including lead generation, paid campaigns, enquiry management, and media events 

• Using the Hub’s market insights data to enable your local marketing team to support your efforts and maximise use of budgets. 

Course marketing case studies, guides and tools 

Student support for online courses has similarities to support offered on in-person courses but there are some extra tasks that need to be considered. It can be difficult to support students when they are often physically removed from the classroom. You will need to consider aspects of student and course administrations like enquiry management, fee collection, enrolments, pastoral care, IT support, assessment and grading and on-going alumni and advocacy relationships.   

Student support case studies, guides and tools 

Course delivery is post-launch of the course, where you have students enrolled and actively engaging. It's officially begun! Many colleagues have reported that it can feel overwhelming to teach a course online, especially if it is something you have not done before. There is help and support available. You will need to consider: 

• Up-skilling opportunities in digital pedagogy and hybrid delivery 

• How to keep a remote scholarly community engaged 

• How to manage IT issues during live online delivery 

• Putting in place practices to ensure student retention.   

Course delivery case studies, guides and tools 

Determining how effective the course has been for students can validate the whole teaching experience: ensuring students have put their learning to use; been stimulated intellectually to new routes of academic enquiry; progressed in their employment prospects; advanced their professional field through research-led teaching; and had an impact for good because of their time with Oxford. You will need to consider: 

• course evaluation design and implementation 

• digital badging and credentialling. 

Student outcomes case studies, guides and tools