How to Design Online Courses Students Want to Show Up For

Special Series on Artificial Intelligence

 

Online learning is not broken. Too many online courses, however, have become content warehouses with deadlines. Students learn to navigate clutter, locate hidden instructions, complete mechanical discussion posts and remain largely invisible. Disengagement is easy to hide, and feedback often arrives too late to influence learning.

The answer is not more technology or more uploaded content. It is better learning design. Great online courses create clarity, momentum, connection, challenge and useful feedback. They are designed experiences in which students speak, collaborate, make decisions, test ideas, present their thinking and see evidence of their own growth.

This webinar explores practical ways to redesign online courses as studios, challenges, simulations and environments for human formation. Participants will consider how AI can deepen engagement rather than replace it, and how course design can help students learn to think, create and act well in partnership with intelligent machines.

Three critical questions this webinar will address

  • What makes students want to participate actively in an online course rather than simply complete it?
  • How can faculty replace passive content delivery and compliance-based discussion with meaningful challenge, dialogue and collaboration?
  • How can AI support engagement and human flourishing without making students intellectually dependent on it?

Key takeaways

This webinar will help you to:

  • Recognize the design features that produce confusion, isolation, weak participation and hidden disengagement.
  • Create a clear course architecture that allows students to focus their effort on ideas, evidence, problems and decisions rather than navigation.
  • Use studio-based, challenge-based, simulation-based and narrative approaches to make learning active, social and purposeful.
  • Apply the Build, Adapt and Defend model so students use AI to improve the quality of their work without reducing the amount of thinking they do.
  • Design online learning experiences that develop judgement, creativity, adaptability, ethical awareness and a stronger sense of learner identity.
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This event is organized and managed by Contact North. You will be redirected during the registration process. If you require technical support, please communicate directly with Contact North. This webinar is offered as free additional resources. The opinions expressed in it do not necessarily reflect the views of the TLSS or the University of Ottawa.

Leading the session (in alphabetical order)

Stephen Murgatroyd

Research Associate
Contact North | Contact Nord

Stephen Murgatroyd has worked extensively in online and distance education, both at The Open University UK (1973-1985) and Athabasca University (1986-1998, 2003-2005). He has also consulted on flexible and innovative learning worldwide. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in 2000 by Athabasca University for his pioneering work in online learning, and in 2025 received the King Charles III Coronation Medal for his contributions to higher education in Canada. His recent book, Higher Education in an Age of Artificial Intelligence, examines the rise of AI in colleges and universities and its implications for education.

Event details

Start date Wednesday, December 9, 2026 - 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Duration 60 min
Seats available 300
Organizer Contact North
Audience Professors
Language English event
Delivery mode Online via Zoom
Location Online via Zoom (Contact North Webinars)