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The courses in the VCU Online: Excellence in Online Instruction Certificate may be taken in a stand-alone format. Please note that descriptions vary slightly.

You can choose from the following five courses: Best Practices in Online Instruction, Designing Online Instruction, Evaluating for Online Excellence, Mentoring for Online Excellence, and Leadership for Online Programs. Upon the successful completion of each course, you will receive a digital badge.

Available courses:

Best Practices in Online Instruction – This course helps instructors understand different aspects of online course management, including instructor presence, communication with students, time/work management, and accessibility. The course is self-paced with support from VCU Online faculty. You will earn a digital badge upon successful completion. (Time Limit - 30 calendar days)

Designing Online Instruction – This course provides an overview of effective teaching strategies and techniques for revising or creating course learning objectives, aligning course materials and assessments, developing an online course using a Learning Management System (LMS) and other tools, structuring your online course content, and engaging students in the online environment. The course is self-paced with support from VCU Online faculty. You will earn a digital badge upon successful completion. (Time Limit - 60 calendar days)

Evaluating for Online Excellence – This course is designed to introduce faculty, department chairs, administrators and other stakeholders in online learning to the evaluation process with research-recognized quality rubrics. This course explains these concepts while informing participants of accepted best practice in the field of online course design. The course is self-paced with support from VCU Online faculty. You will earn a digital badge upon successful completion. (Time Limit - 30 calendar days)

Mentoring for Online Excellence – This course is designed to educate faculty on the best practices in mentoring their peers to design and teach courses for online learning. This course exposes learners to new materials and strategies that will help them to become a mentor for colleagues that are new to teaching online or are considering teaching online for the first time. The course is self-paced with support from VCU Online faculty. You will earn a digital badge upon successful completion. (Time Limit - 30 calendar days)

Leadership for Online Programs – This course covers the basics of online learning, the process for developing an online course, how to develop small and large scale online programs as well as the role of the administrator in leading these programs in terms of faculty and student support. The course is self-paced with support from VCU Online faculty. You will earn a digital badge upon successful completion. (Time Limit - 30 calendar days)