Five years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, online courses are in more demand than ever. While asynchronous and synchronous modalities picked up steam in the 2010s, people became used to earning degrees and completing job training from home after being forced into online learning and work when society shifted almost overnight in March 2020.

Many don't want to return to the way things were. The new normal is, well, just normal. Instructional designers are having a hard time keeping up with course design requests for new classes, as well as those based on an in-person format. Online learning has quickly become a form of traditional learning.

With over a decade of online teaching that includes thousands of students taught in over a hundred courses at top-tier graduate schools, as well as corporate and government training, I also have had the opportunity to design most of these courses. This experience has evolved my instructional design approach, honing it to where I can replicate it quickly and crystallizing it into what I call the “rapid deployment model.” This process certainly was put to the test during the emergence of COVID-19 where, within days, I helped a number of schools stand-up online courses to replace in-person ones.

Build Engaging Courses Faster: A Rapid Deployment Model for Instructional Design is a how-to roadmap that provides tried and true architecture to support an online class. From the discovery process and identifying the learning challenge to formulating SMART objectives and creating content and assignments, as well as applying a number of learning theories, engaging with students and course evaluation, this book helps online learning professionals construct effective and innovative courses within a more efficient timeframe.