The Course Design Institute (CDI) provides opportunities for faculty to work with peers from different disciplines to design and develop fully online courses. Collaborating with colleagues outside their usual circles, faculty members focus less on content development, placing greater emphasis on pedagogy.

The backbone of the CDI is the Quality Online Learning and Teaching (QOLT) rubric. The QOLT instrument provides a framework to assist faculty in the development of high-quality, engaging online courses for their students. QOLT emphasizes the following aspects of online course design: assessment, instructional materials, student interaction, facilitation, learner support, accessibility and universal design, and mobile readiness. QOLT also provides the foundation for the CDI training course in Blackboard, which serves as a hub for CDI participants and as a repository for examples of best practices in online teaching and learning.

Faculty participate in weekly CDI group meetings to discuss their plans for their online course. Hands-on training occurs both in the CDI group and in one-on-one consultations with ITS instructional designers, fellow faculty members, and other ITS partners, including the SDSU Library. With the QOLT instrument serving as the GPS for this process, the CDI has been the incubator for the development of well over 100 fully online courses since its inception in 2008.