Online learning (OL) courses help faculty improve skills for online teaching and service. The courses are open to all current Penn State faculty, staff, and graduate students and are offered in a self-directed or instructor-led format. Self-directed courses can be completed at your own pace. Instructor-led courses are facilitated by Penn State faculty and simulate the online student experience.
All self-guided courses must be completed within 60 days of registering and no later than December 31.
OL 1200: Student Support and Advocacy in Online Learning (2025)
At times, students face personal challenges or have emotional needs that impact their academic progress, social development, or emotional well-being. Instructors may be the first point of contact for students experiencing external stress, presenting them with the opportunity to recognize signs of stress before others do. This course will teach you where to direct students for assistance, when to handle concerns yourself, how to identify urgent concerns, best practices for alleviating stress, and how to foster an inclusive learning environment.
OL 2600.01 Accessible Online Course Authoring
This course equips course authors and instructors with knowledge about accessible web practices and course design that can be applied when creating and adding content in Canvas. Beyond teaching standard accessibility best practices for authoring in Canvas, this course also aims to provide a broader perspective on World Campus students and why implementing these practices matters for them.
OL 2600.01 Accessible Online Course Authoring (2025)
This course equips course authors and instructors with knowledge about accessible web practices and course design that can be applied when creating and adding content in Canvas. Beyond teaching standard accessibility best practices for authoring in Canvas, this course also aims to provide a broader perspective on World Campus students and why implementing these practices matters for them.
OL 3000.01 Supporting Accommodations for Online Learners
At some point in your teaching, you’ll be notified that a student needs an accommodation. Often, this may confront you with a question or dilemma requiring action from you, perhaps well before you fully understand all of the issues, protocols, or possible solutions. To simulate such situations and prepare you to handle them, this course forgoes the standard online course framework and instead presents a scenario that situates you in an accommodation-related problem at the beginning of each module.
OL 3000.01 Supporting Accommodations for Online Learners (2025)
At some point in your teaching, you’ll be notified that a student needs an accommodation. Often, this may confront you with a question or dilemma requiring action from you, perhaps well before you fully understand all of the issues, protocols, or possible solutions. To simulate such situations and prepare you to handle them, this course forgoes the standard online course framework and instead presents a scenario that situates you in an accommodation-related problem at the beginning of each module.
OL 3100.01 Teaching the Adult Learner
According to the American Council on Education, more than 50 percent of students are adult learners. These numbers continue to grow as these individuals seek to advance in their career, obtain a degree to stay competitive, retrain for a new position, or pursue a new career. This course will teach you how to differentiate the characteristics and needs of traditional students (18- to 22-year-olds) from those of adult learners in order to help you best teach them.
OL 3100.01 Teaching the Adult Learner (2025)
According to the American Council on Education, more than 50 percent of students are older adults. This course will help you differentiate between the needs and skills of adult learners and traditional learners, defined as 18–22 year-old students. Topics include adult learner characteristics, teaching the adult learner and facilitating success in online courses.
OL 3200.01 Serving Military-Connected Students
Most World Campus instructors will encounter students with a connection to the U.S. Armed Forces: currently serving members, former members, retirees, or dependents of a service member. This course will introduce you to military-connected students at Penn State and teach you how to best support them. It is designed as a mission-oriented experience to provide you with a glimpse into the life of an active-duty service member.
OL 3200.01 Serving Military-Connected Students (2025)
In your line of work, you will likely encounter students with a connection to the U.S. Armed Forces: currently serving members, former members, retirees, or dependents. This course will introduce you to the population of military-connected students at Penn State and how faculty and staff can best support them. OL 3200 is an independent, self-paced course that is designed as a mission-oriented experience.
OL 3500.01 Gamification in Online Teaching and Learning (April 2025)
April 14, 2025–May 12, 2025
This is a course about games and what it means to “gamify” your teaching. It’s something of an immersive experience in order to plant you in the language and culture of gaming. By doing this, the goal is for you to rethink what it would look like if you took a course you have been teaching and re-thought what it would look like if it were “gamified.” Some of these ideas might stick so well you will want to work on them right off. Others might seem goofy or too opaque for you to work with. Either way, if you choose to accept the journey of this course, you just might not look at online teaching in quite the same way.
OL 3600.01 Universal Design for Learning
In this introductory course on Universal Design for Learning (UDL), you will be presented with rationales and research that support designing learning experiences with UDL in mind, read scenarios about applications of UDL, and reflect on ways you can change your current practice. This course isn’t a checklist for achieving UDL — UDL isn’t a course status; it’s an ideal that guides instructor practice and course design. Note: Although accessibility is an integral part of UDL, this course will not teach you how to design an accessible course. However, it will help you make your course more accessible, engaging, and flexible.
OL 3600.01 Universal Design for Learning (2025)
In this introductory course on Universal Design for Learning (UDL), you will be presented with rationales and research that support designing learning experiences with UDL in mind, read scenarios about applications of UDL, and reflect on ways you can change your current practice. This course isn’t a checklist for achieving UDL — UDL isn’t a course status; it’s an ideal that guides instructor practice and course design. Note: Although accessibility is an integral part of UDL, this course will not teach you how to design an accessible course. However, it will help you make your course more accessible, engaging, and flexible.
OL 3800.01 Excellence in Academic Advising
This course examines the foundations of academic advising as essential components of student success and retention in higher education. Topics include the philosophical and theoretical underpinnings of academic advising; the Penn State curriculum and student record systems; advising skills, including advising diverse student populations; the legal and ethical issues in academic advising; and advising technology at Penn State.
OL 3800.01 Excellence in Academic Advising (2025)
This course examines the foundations of academic advising as essential components of student success and retention in higher education. Topics include the philosophical and theoretical underpinnings of academic advising; the Penn State curriculum and student record systems; advising skills, including advising diverse student populations; the legal and ethical issues in academic advising; and advising technology at Penn State.
OL 3825.01: Excellence in Academic Advising: Under-Resourced Students (2025)
This course takes a deep dive into “under-resourced” students and how to provide quality academic advising based on the essential components and unique characteristics of each student population. Topics include advising multicultural populations of students, LGBTQ students, students with disabilities, and first-generation students. Taking a holistic view of advising a student is always a good approach, but it’s particularly important when working with these student populations. This requires an understanding of many student cohorts and the unique characteristics of each population.
OL 3850.01: Excellence in Academic Advising: Under-Resourced Students II (2025)
This course is Part 2 on how to provide quality academic advising to under-resourced students based on the essential components and unique characteristics of each student population. Topics include advising diverse student populations, including athletes, online, nontraditional, high-achieving, military, and transfer students. You don’t have to complete Part 1 before taking this course. Taking a holistic view of advising a student is always a good approach, but it’s particularly important when working with these student populations. This requires an understanding of many student cohorts and the unique characteristics of each population.
OL 3855.01 Empowering Conversations: Interacting with Student Supporters
As faculty and staff, we find ourselves partnering more often with supporters of our learners, from our youngest learners to those returning to college or experiencing college for the first time well after high school. These collaborative partnerships often extend to our students’ supporters outside of Penn State (e.g., parents, partners, siblings, advocates, employers, or close friends).
OL 3875.01 Excellence in Academic Advising: Career Advising
Although career advising isn’t the primary role of an academic adviser, holistic academic advising involves more than just course selection. Students routinely ask academic advisers career-related questions. The purpose of this course is to inform the career conversations you have with students and support you in identifying suitable referrals to career professionals and resources at Penn State.
Course registration closes one week before the start date for instructor-led courses. All course work should be completed within the designated course timeline.
July 2025
OL 2000.01: Essentials of Online Teaching
When: 07/28/2025 - 08/25/2025
This course will address four themes of teaching online: being present and engaged, preparing to teach, creating a climate of belonging, and reflecting on your teaching. In addition, you’ll be given guidance and resources to help you in instances where students experience extenuating circumstances or engage in forms of misconduct.
Competencies addressed in this course are based on the Critical Teaching Behavior framework. This course supports best practices in teaching and delivering an online course that is already designed.
OL 2150.01: Canvas Hands On
When: 07/28/2025 - 08/25/2025
In this course, you will complete important operations needed to prepare a Canvas course, add content to it, manage interactions within it, and use some advanced features. By the end of the course, you will have the technical skills necessary to prepare, develop, and teach a course in Canvas. This course focuses on the competencies necessary to operate fluently in Canvas. Best practices in online teaching are presented, but you will be assessed only on technical competencies in Canvas.
September 2025
OL 3400.01: Online Course Design
When: 09/01/2025 - 10/06/2025
This course was designed for instructors with minimal learning design experience. It will help you to develop an approach to online course design that models Penn State Quality Assurance e-Learning Design Standards and employs Quality Matters Standards to promote effective and engaging learning experiences for Penn State students. Ideally, you will be taking this course to prepare for the development of a new, fully online course. Or perhaps you will be engaging in a redesign or edit of an online course that you have already taught. It will be useful to those either working on their own or in partnership with an instructional designer.
October 2025
OL 2000.01: Essentials of Online Teaching
When: 10/06/2025 - 11/03/2025
This course will address four themes of teaching online: being present and engaged, preparing to teach, creating a climate of belonging, and reflecting on your teaching. In addition, you’ll be given guidance and resources to help you in instances where students experience extenuating circumstances or engage in forms of misconduct.
Competencies addressed in this course are based on the Critical Teaching Behavior framework. This course supports best practices in teaching and delivering an online course that is already designed.
OL 2200.01: Assessment of Online Learners
When: 10/06/2025 - 11/03/2025
Assessment of student learning is essential in understanding and contributing to their academic achievement. In this course, we extend beyond traditional ways of assessing student work, such as tests and quizzes, and explore several other assessment types. The higher education community is increasingly committed to creating learning-centered environments in which faculty are actively involved in helping students succeed. This course goes deeper into the topic of assessing student learning than OL 2000 did.
For planning purposes, all instructor-led courses are listed with the months they are typically available.
OL 2000: Essentials of Online TeachingOffered: February, April, June, July, October
OL 2050: Essentials of Online Teaching for Graduate StudentsOffered: May, September
OL 2150: Canvas Hands OnOffered: March, June, July
OL 2200: Assessment of Online LearnersOffered: June, October
OL 2300: Teamwork in Online Teaching and LearningOffered: Under Revision
OL 2450: Integrating Open Educational Resources into Your CourseOffered: February, June
OL 3300: Teaching the International StudentOffered: Under Revision
OL 3400: Online Course DesignOffered: March, September
OL 3500: Gamification in Online Teaching and LearningOffered: April