The key ingredients in designing successful online education

Online education is not an entirely new concept, but the recent pandemic has propelled students, teachers, schools and universities across the globe to embrace online learning.

At the heart of successful online learning is engaging delivery, regular teacher and peer engagement and opportunities to connect learning with real-world experience.

There has been much talk about what works and what doesn’t but we asked Dr Sue Brown, from Federation University, what are some of the key ingredients to successful online learning?

“For me, it’s always the student engagement – especially when you have a globally accessible degree – making sure the students always have that connection with each other and with their teacher is the most important aspect.” Dr Sue Brown

“It is also fantastic when the students can come together to discuss a topic and we can have different views from around the world and from different cultures discussing sport all together.”

“Designing a successful online degree means you have to think outside the box and often challenge the conventions of teaching, but some of my key ingredients to successful online learning would be:

• Deliberate design – everything must be specific to online
• Quality teacher to student engagement
• Supportive online community where students can readily engage with each other
• Quality vs quantity screen time.”

Dr Sue Brown is the Director of International Sport Management at Federation University Australia. Find out what you'll learn in the Bachelor of International Sport Management.