Determining how you will develop and deliver your content is considered more time-consuming than developing a face-to-face course. Therefore, Nagel and Kotze (2010) strongly recommend that faculty create an organized course with explicit detail and expectations thus laying the foundation for your teaching presence. The following strategies will help you save time and maintain an orderly and organized online course.

Setting Up Your Course

Every semester you need to create a new course shell to house that semester's students and class content. Before you can request a course account, you need to ensure that your course is listed in the <Replace - Institution Name> course schedule and that you are listed as the instructor of record (you cannot request a course account if you are not listed as the instructor of record). If your students are unable to register for your course, you will need to contact your department scheduler.

The Course Time Line

As with your face-to-face class, your online course will have an ebb and flow. It may be hard to predict exactly how your course will run when you first teach it. Follow the suggestions below to help minimize potential issues that may arise:

Before the Course Starts

One-week prior to the start of class, contact your students via an external email to establish swift trust (Coppola, et. Al, 2004) and your instructor presence (Nagel and Kotze, 2010). Notify your students of how to access the course and where to begin working in the course.
Review the Module Settings. This option allows you to control when students access course content and various tools based on a pre-defined time or performance parameters.
Review the Course Menu. Depending on the course, you may not use all the tools in <Replace - Your LMS>. It is strongly recommended to hide them from students, especially the files area.
Based on your course grading policy, set up weighted percentages for grading.
Make adjustments to your content using the Rich Content Editor

First Week of Course

Publish your course. Student's won't be able to access your course until you publish the course.
Establish a weekly course routine for yourself and your students. Consistency will ensure that students will know how to access the course content and complete assignments on time. Another consideration is to have all of your assignments due on the same date and time throughout the semester.
Use Course Statistics to see which students have logged into your course.

During the Course

Use Announcements or Conversations to alert your students of any changes to the course.
Use Learning Analytics and the Access Report to monitor student performance
When a student has a question related to the course, chances are good that other students have the same question. Therefore, it is recommended that you share the answers with all of your students. Choose any of the following options to alert your students of the answer(s):
- Use the Announcement tool
- Create a discussion topic called Ask the Professor
- Send a message to all students via conversations.

End of Course

Remind the students to complete the Student Perception of Instruction (SPI)
Make grade adjustments: curve or drop scores
Download a copy of the grades
When updating your course for the next semester, it is suggested to use the 80/20 rule. Redesign 20% of the current content, activities and assignments and leave 80% intact.

Optional Further Reading

Fein, A.D. & Logan, M.C. (2003). Preparing Instructors for Online Instruction. New Directions of Adult and Continuing Education, no. 100: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ace.118/pdf
Meyerson, D., Weick, K. E., & Kramer, R. M. (1996). Swift trust and temporary groups. In R. M.Kramer and T. R.Tyler, (Eds.), Trust in organizations: Frontiers of theory and research (pp. 166–195). Thousand Oaks , CA : Sage Publications.
Principles of Online Design: Course Management. Retrieved February 22, 2011 from Florida Gulf Coast University, Faculty Development and Support website: http://www.fgcu.edu/onlinedesign/manage.html
Yang, Y. and Cornelious, L.F. (2005). Preparing Instructors for Quality Online Instruction. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, vol 8, issue 1http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/spring81/yang81.htm

References

Coppola, N. W., Hiltz, S. R., and Rotter, N. G. (2004) Building Trust in Virtual Teams. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, (June), 95-104.
Nagel, L., & Kotzé, T. (2010). Supersizing e-learning: What a CoI survey reveals about teaching presence in a large online class. Internet & Higher Education, 13 (1/2), 45-51. doi:10.1016/j.iheduc.2009.12.001.