Program Overview
Developed through collaboration among faculty contributors and the Center for Effective Teaching and Learning, this self-paced program begins where course design ends. Quality Matters certification confirms that an online course is well built. How to Teach Online addresses the question that comes next: how do you teach that course well? Grounded in the specific context of teaching and learning at Cal State LA, the program works through the human side of online instruction, establishing instructor presence, setting a communication rhythm students can rely on, building engagement and community, designing assessment that measures what matters, teaching for access and inclusion, and sustaining the practice across semesters. Cal State LA tools, resources, and real course examples anchor the work throughout.
Who: This program is designed for faculty at any stage of their careers who teach, or will teach, online at Cal State LA. It is especially suited to instructors whose courses have earned Quality Matters certification and who want to move from a well-designed course to a well-taught one, though the practices apply to any online course.
What: This online, asynchronous program features nine self-paced modules focused on the craft of teaching online: presence and voice, communication and rhythm, engagement, community, assessment, access and inclusion, teaching with AI, and long-term sustainability. Each module includes video content, readings, knowledge checks for self-assessment, and a practical activity applied to a real course. Every activity is evaluated Pass or Not Yet, with unlimited revision and no penalty, modeling the revision-friendly feedback the modules ask faculty to offer their own students. Participants should expect to spend approximately sixty minutes on each module, or about nine hours in total.
The program consists of nine self-paced modules:
Designing the Learning Experience
Your Presence, Your Voice
Communication and Course Rhythm
Igniting and Sustaining Engagement
Building a Learning Community
Assessment That Works Online
Teaching for Access and Inclusion
Teaching with AI
Teaching for the Long Haul
By the end of the program, faculty will have moved from a certified course to one they can teach with presence, connection, and confidence. Rather than finishing with notes alone, participants leave with concrete materials built for their own courses: a presence plan, a communication plan, redesigned engagement and assessment, an access audit, an AI policy, and a sustainability plan they can carry into the next semester.
Meet Our Faculty Contributor
Dr. Melanie Stagnaro is a Lecturer in the Departments of Sociology and Psychology at Cal State LA, where she has taught for more than twenty years across both in-person and fully online formats. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Florida and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Southern California. Her expertise spans online and hybrid instruction, research methods and statistics, and evidence-based pedagogy. A Quality Matters Peer Reviewer with QM and ACUE teaching certifications, she brings both the design and the day-to-day craft of online teaching to this course.