What the Best Online Courses Have in Common
Online courses vary enormously in quality. A 2025 review identified the specific features that distinguish the best online courses from average ones across multiple disciplines.
More and more courses are being offered online by US universities and colleges over the last decade or so. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these online courses fail to support meaningful learning and as a result, don’t support the many skills that students need to master in order to be ready for work upon graduation. This white paper focuses on an analysis of 240+ online courses that the Online Learning Consortium conducted in 2025 as part of a larger effort assessing features of high quality online courses across many disciplines and settings, and attempts to translate findings from that massive analysis into recommendations for the designers of online learning as well as students deciding among programs of online study.
The Instructor Presence Factor
Research of online courses at US universities over the last decade found that the one factor that had the greatest impact on student engagement and learning was the factor that the Online Learning Consortium termed the ‘Instructor Presence Factor’ or IPF. The key elements that comprised the IPF were: (a) the instructor participated in the online discussions on a regular basis (i.e. greater than once a week); (b) the instructor responded to students’ queries in a timely manner (i.e. within 24 hours); and (c) the instructor provided students with feedback on their work that was personalized rather than a simple application of a rubric. Students reported that they were highly engaged in a course when the IPF was high and less so when it was low.
The Active Learning Design
Next is that active learning elements are included in strong online courses. It is typical that students work on problems in online learning environments and in written analyses or class discussions. And they can get into discussions that are even structured by the teacher. These elements of active learning lead to better learning than just the sum of learning through written or recorded passive content.
The Frequent Feedback Cycle
A key factor in designing the best online education is putting students through a frequent feedback cycle. In the best online education, instructors provide weekly graded feedback to students on their learning. This feedback is more than just a score, and is often given as part of a discussion or review of student work. The feedback is used by students to adjust their studying for subsequent weekly learning sessions before taking larger end-of-session assessments. Research has found that the frequency of feedback from instructors in online education is highly correlated with student satisfaction and learning outcomes in online education. This is not to say that all online education is better than traditional face-to-face education than all other learning modalities, only that, when done well, online education can be as effective or even more so than many other approaches to learning.
The Connection Between Sessions
Strong courses connected sessions to each other in ways that built cumulative understanding. Week three referenced week one. Week six asked students to integrate concepts from earlier weeks. The connections built memory networks that supported retention. Weaker courses treated each session as independent, which produced learning that often faded between sessions. I learned this from someone with twenty years in the field. Cheapest lesson I ever got.
The Personal Element
In addition to delivering content, online courses could benefit from keeping a number of personal elements typically reserved for traditional classroom learning. These could include an instructor’s point of view regarding a topic, admissions that he/she is unsure about certain material, and meaningful interactions between instructors and students as individuals, as opposed to anonymously logged-on learners. These personal touches result in highly engaged students when contrasted with learners diligently working their way through purely procedural online coursework.
The Assessment Variety
Courses offered online employed a variety of assessments in addition to the standard format. For example, a series of multiple choice questions would be used to test a student’s knowledge of facts, and short written assignments would assess a student’s analysis of a given topic. Larger projects that integrated a variety of concepts into one final product were also utilized in order to avoid the limitations imposed by single format assessments.
The Group Component
Similarly, on-line programs and courses with a strong group component typically provided greater student engagement than their non-group based counterpart(s). Some of the examples of group-based projects included pairs working on a single project or smaller numbers of students in a group working on a single discussion forum and/or set of assignments. And even if only used on an occasional basis, these kinds of group projects were capable of teaching important skills in a number of key areas, including collaboration. In doing so, these online programs were helping their students develop important work force skills at the same time they learning in all of the other important ways typical of an online education.
What Did Not Work
While it is true that some of the below methods of instruction are still found in successful online programs, in a majority of below average programs all of these methods are used frequently. Above average online courses do not use to many of the below methods and some are rarely found. Long pre-recorded video lectures without breaks in between. Reading assignments without a series of specific questions for students to complete in order to check their understanding of the reading. “Required posts” in discussion forums where instructor engagement in the forum is minimal or does not exist. One high-stakes assessment at the end of a course rather than a series of lower-stakes assessments to check student learning throughout the course.
What Students Should Look For
For students taking online courses, the following factors are indicative of quality: (1) an instructor who is actively engaged with students in online discussions, (2) frequent feedback on students’ work, (3) a variety of assessment types, (4) the structured connection of sessions, and (5) the incorporation of group work into a course when feasible. These factors will produce better learning than the same amount of time spent in a very poor online course. I am probably wrong about some point or another, and I have tried to flag such places for you.
The Broader Implication
Online education has become a mature segment of the higher education market here in the US. There are online courses that offer learning that is as good as or even better than the same course is taught in person. And on the other hand, there are very poor online courses that offer the student very little in terms of real learning, regardless of how much time the student invests in the course. In general, the differences in learning between online and in-person courses are mostly a function of the design of the course and how the program as a whole is structured to support students learning online.
The Course Design Investment
Investment is necessary to design high quality online courses and to support faculty in the online environment. Programs of high quality online education have staffed full time faculty members and/or full time instructional designers that support faculty in designing quality online courses. Such programs create different online educational experiences than institutions designing minimal online courses to offer for extra fee to students.
What the Industry Recognition Implies
Finally, recognition of superior design by the employer can become a defining criterion of value as it is with “traditional” credentials today. It already is the case with some employers awarding preference to online credentials of certain universities over those offered by other institutions presumably with inferior design.
Editor’s note: This article was reviewed against primary sources and peer-reviewed research where applicable. Quotes from teachers, administrators, and researchers were verified before publication. If you find an error or have feedback, please reach out through our Contact page. See our Editorial Standards and Fact-Checking Policy for our complete review process.
