Online and technology-mediated learning continues to merge into the mainstream of higher education, yet uniformly implemented policies and guidelines for course quality and accessibility features may not exist at an institution, or if they do exist may be unevenly applied. There may exist a tension between an institutional need for consistency across courses and issues of faculty training and support, or what may be perceived as academic freedom. The result may be a patchwork of course designs at best, or loss of student engagement at worst.

Working within the context of quality course design and accessibility, this discussion will provide participants with the opportunity to compare their knowledge (or notions) of course design with well known and established processes and rubrics. Participants will be able to reflect on various aspects of good (and poor) course design, and have an opportunity to review and discuss different design aspects of a course themselves, both for quality as well as accessibility. Considerations for identifying the attributes of highly accessible courses, which benefit all learners, will be an additional focus of this session.