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 departmental circles as they develop their courses, the focus is on pedagogy, with a major emphasis on interaction and student engagement.

The CDI uses the Quality Online Learning and Teaching (QOLT) rubric (https://cal.sdsu.edu/_resources/docs/QOLT%20Instrument.pdf) as the framework to assist faculty in the development of high-quality, engaging online courses. The QOLT rubric emphasizes assessment, instructional materials, student interaction, facilitation, learner support, accessibility and universal design, and mobile readiness. The CDI reinforces these aspects through a training course in Canvas, where faculty benefit from hands-on experience as a student in an online learning environment.  This Canvas course also serves as a repository for examples of best practices in online teaching and learning, providing models for faculty as they design their own online courses.

Faculty participate in weekly CDI group meetings comprised of 5-6 peers to discuss their plans for their online courses. Group meetings highlight fundamental pedagogical principles of exemplary course design, along with hands-on training with technological tools to put these principles into action.  Further support is provided via one-on-one consultations with ITS instructional designers, ITS Faculty Fellows, and other ITS partners, including the SDSU Library. 

The CDI has been the incubator for the development of nearly 180 fully online courses since its inception in 2008, and was a major contributor to a significant milestone achieved at SDSU during the 2019 Summer Session with the enrollment of more than 10,000 students in fully online courses.