Instructional Designer Certificate Programs

The OLC Center for Professional Learning (CPL) offers a range of online courses and programs geared towards instructional designers – start your own professional development today!

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Program Overviews

Instructional Designer Certificate Program

Our “flagship” program helps new and current IDs to build and refine their skillset throughout four required courses:

  • ID1: Professional Foundations & Learning Trends
  • ID2: Helping Faculty with New Course Development
  • ID3: Curating & Evaluating Resources for Faculty
  • ID4: Designing Course Quality Review Processes for Digital Learning

Advanced Instructional Designer Certificate Program

This advanced program challenges IDs to enhance and strengthen their learning design and project management skills. There are three required phases:

  • Phase 1: Core Courses
  • Phase 2: Electives
  • Phase 3: Capstone Project

ID-Themed Courses

The OLC CPL offers several stand-alone courses (four weeks in length) focusing on topics beneficial to IDs as well.

  • Instructional Design Mastery Series
  • Applying the Neuro, Cognitive, and Learning Sciences to Instructional Design
  • Data Stories: An Introduction to Data Visualization
  • Project Management for Instructional Designers

The Instructional Designer Certificate Program

The Instructional Designer Certificate Program provides practicing instructional designers the opportunity to build or refine their skills, including: working with faculty during the online course design and development process analyzing learning and instructional theories and instructional methods reviewing emerging best practices in digital learning, and learning strategies for developing and adopting a course quality review process.

The program consists of 4 required courses:

  • ID1: Professional Foundations and Learning Trends
  • ID2: Helping Faculty with New Course Development
  • ID3: Curating and Evaluating Resources for Faculty
  • ID4: Designing Course Quality Review Processes for Digital Learning

 

Who should take this program?

This series of four online courses are designed for new and experienced online instructional designers, librarians, and multimedia specialists who work directly with online faculty and other online learning support professionals during the course design and development process, as well as online faculty who support online course design and development at their institution. Participants can expect to spend 7-10 hours per week reviewing the course content and working on the required activities.

Prerequisites 

Participants must have at least one year of experience in supporting online course design and development in an instructional design capacity or completed the “Instructional Design Mastery Series” four week workshop.

Program Registration Options & 2024 Fees

Full Program: $1,800 (OLC Institutional Member) / $1,960 (OLC Professional Member) / $2,180 (Non-Member)

Individual Courses: $530 per course (OLC Institutional Member) / $580 per course (OLC Professional Member) /
$630 per course (Non-Member)

Great instructional designers continually improve their professional knowledge and skills through networking, research, and collaboration. In this course, you will assess your knowledge of learning and instructional theories, current learning trends, and instructional designer competencies. You will then engage in research, networking, and collaboration to address your needs. You will also explore well-established theories of learning and instruction that are meant to foster critical and creative thinking, problem-solving, and metacognition. Our focus will be to evaluate those theories and strategies for use in different courses and contexts and apply those strategies in ways that support deeper learning. This course utilizes several of the instructional methods you will be researching so you can experience them while you learn about them.

  • Week 1: Learning & Instructional Theories, Instructional Designer Competencies, and Current Learning Trends
  • Week 2: Instructional Strategies for Deeper Learning Development
  • Week 3: Instructional Design Models and Frameworks
  • Week 4: Networking and Communities of Practice

This course is designed to help new online instructional designers be confident in their knowledge and abilities in guiding new faculty through the online course development process. Participants will discuss how to dispel the initial apprehensions for teaching online, strategies for planning online faculty development experiences, creating and managing online course development milestones, and the practice and procedure for implementing a continuous improvement plan.

  • Week 1: Instructional Designers and Your Institution
  • Week 2: The Course Development Process
  • Week 3: Faculty Development Strategies
  • Week 4: Evaluating Impact and Continuous Improvement

This course is designed to allow participants the opportunity to explore and discuss tailoring resources for online faculty, including tools, strategies and curating techniques. Techniques for helping online faculty integrate resources into their online courses, such as multimedia, open education resources, and social networking tools are also explored.

  • Week 1: Evaluating Resources
  • Week 2: Collecting Resources
  • Week 3: Organizing and Developing Resources
  • Week 4: Developing and Sharing Resources

This 4-week online course is designed for instructional designers who are ready to lead the development and implementation of course quality review processes in digital learning environments. Participants will explore established course quality frameworks and through guided analysis and collaborative reflection, will compare and contrast these models to understand their structure, focus areas, and institutional applications. By the end of the course, each participant will create a customized course quality review rubric or scorecard tailored to their institutional context, along with a practical implementation plan.

  • Week 1: Foundations of Course Quality in Digital Learning
  • Week 2: Exploring Course Quality Rubrics and Scorecards
  • Week 3: Designing a Custom Course Quality Review Rubric/Scorecard
  • Week 4: Implementing and Sustaining a Course Review Process

Advanced Instructional Designer Certificate Program

This program challenges instructional designers who have worked in the field for several years to enhance and strengthen their learning design and management skills! Upon completion, participants will leave with new knowledge they can apply to their work as instructional designers and an artifact showcasing their skills that are personalized to their own unique situations.

Participants must complete all 3 program phases within 1-year, starting from the first day they enroll in the main program course:

  • Phase 1: Core Courses – Completion of the two required 4-week core courses on project management and learning sciences in instructional design.
  • Phase 2: Electives – Completion of either one 4-week workshop (core courses do not apply) or two 7-day workshops.
  • Phase 3: Capstone Project – Creation of an artifact using what was learned throughout the program.

 

Program Prerequisites

Completion of the OLC Instructional Designer Certificate Program OR at least 3 years working in an instructional designer role.

Pricing

$1,800 (OLC Institutional Members) / $1,960 (OLC Professional Members) / $2,180 (Non-OLC Members)

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