An Online Asynchronous College Physics Course Designed From The Ground Up

Online courses are often maligned as not being engaging or interactive enough or as having lower quality instruction, especially when compared against their in-person counterparts. Anecdotal evidence shows, however, that demand from students for such courses is higher than ever. We present here a first-semester College Physics course that was designed from the ground up in an online asynchronous format to be taught on a condensed schedule over a 6-week summer term at a large R1 public university. We address the issue of how to maintain desirable levels of student-content, student-instructor and student-student interactions and how elements of Universal Design for Learning were incorporated into the design of the course. We also address one of the biggest challenges for online asynchronous introductory physics courses, which is the lab component, and how authentic laboratory activities were implemented. Finally, we discuss how academic integrity was managed in the course and present student feedback and some lessons learned throughout the development and course deployment processes.