Course Design Facilitates Readability
The goal of this continuing feature is to help instructors enhance the quality of their online courses by meeting the essential (3-point) standards from the Quality Matters rubric. By meeting these standards, you’re on your way to developing a robust learning experience for your students. We continue our rubric review with a look at the final standard, which focuses on accessibility. Essential Standard 8.2 describes the importance of course design that facilitates readability.
Essential Standard 8.2 – The course design facilitates readability. Effective course design ensures that learners can easily read and interpret the course content.
Tips to help you meet the standard:
- Format content or use color coding to serve specific instructional purposes.
- Group similar content together and use headings to signify a change of topic.
- Use white space around large blocks of text to assist readability.
- Use consistent heading and body styles throughout the course.
- Choose simple, unadorned fonts and limit the number of font families to one or two.
- Make sure the text color is distinguishable from the background.
General Standard 8.0 – Accessibility and Usability
The course design reflects a commitment to accessibility and usability for all learners. FSU is committed to creating an environment where all students can learn. To ensure learning is accessible for all students, course materials are offered using the principles of accessibility and universal design. Students can vary in their learning preferences, physical abilities, communication skills, socioeconomic status, or access to technology. A commitment to accessible design benefits a broader student population. In making their courses accessible, instructors are not only complying with federal requirements, but they are also meeting the educational needs of all learners.
Essential Standards
8.1: Course navigation facilitates ease of use.
8.2: The course design facilitates readability.
8.3: Text in the course is accessible.
8.4: Images in the course are accessible.*
8.5: Video and audio content in the course is accessible.*
General and essential standards are taken from the Quality Matters Higher Education Rubric, Seventh Edition.
*In the QM rubric, Standards 8.4 and 8.5 are considered very important (2-point) standards. FSU recognizes the importance of ensuring multimedia content is accessible to all learners, so Standards 8.4 and 8.5 are required elements for the FSU Online Quality Initiative.
If you’re interested in learning more about online course quality, visit the FSU Online Quality Initiative page.