Online Course Conversion Template
Three documents and three sheets that convert a course one activity at a time, including the ones that leave nothing to record.
Free download · No account needed
The default conversion is to record the lectures, post the slides, move the exams into the quiz tool and open a discussion board. None of that is unreasonable and the result is still a worse course, because the lectures were never the part doing the work. Walk a face-to-face course session by session and most of the contact time turns out to be something else: a discussion the instructor steers, a group exercise with the instructor circulating, a lab where people get stuck and ask.
None of those has an artefact. Recording the room captures nothing of them, so a conversion organised around weeks and videos deletes them silently, and nobody notices until the term is running. This pack makes the unit of conversion one activity instead. The course is inventoried as activity types with instance counts and minutes, and every row gets converted on its own terms, with what the naive conversion would produce written next to what the designed equivalent is.
That gives each row a test it can fail. Federal regulation defines distance education around regular and substantive interaction and lists four things substantive interaction can be, of which an activity needs at least two. A posted recording delivers exactly one. So each activity is coded twice, and on the worked course in here that coding is the argument: seven of ten activities deliver none of the four under the naive conversion, covering just under half the contact time.
What is in the pack
Activity Conversion Map
The sheet the pack is built on. One row per activity type with instances, minutes, what a record-the-lectures conversion would produce, and the designed online equivalent, each coded for how many of the four named interaction types it delivers. Ten activity types across 66 instances on the worked course, reconciled against 2,250 scheduled contact minutes.
How the Conversion Map Works
The mechanism doc. Why the unit of conversion is one activity rather than one week, what the four interaction types are and where they come from, and the four conversion moves that reliably get an activity from one type to two. Also the reason the map codes the naive conversion at all: that column is what makes the case for doing the work.
Media Production List
Only the activities that actually need video, which in a well-designed map is a minority of them. Segments capped at twelve minutes and named for the question they answer. Production and caption ratios written into the sheet as assumptions, so 63.0 hours of recording and 42.0 hours of captioning are arguable numbers rather than a quote.
Module Structure
The container. Modules organised by outcome group rather than by week, because online the calendar is a schedule and not a structure. Six parts in every module in the same order, including the one that gets left out: a self-check the student can run without submitting anything, so they find out they are lost before the graded work tells them.
Accessibility Note
Captions as a real line rather than a platform feature, since machine captions on technical vocabulary are wrong on exactly the words carrying the meaning. Then the three that get missed after captions: colour as the only signal in a figure, scanned readings that cannot be read aloud or reflowed, and how the platform actually applies extended time on a timed exam.
Build Tracker
One row per unit of work with a single owner, hours and blockers, and accessibility as a column on each media item rather than a phase at the end. Two of the three blockers on the worked build are unmade decisions rather than time, which is the distinction that turns a plan into a schedule.
How it works
- 1
Send the schedule, not just the syllabus
The session-by-session term schedule is the important input and the one nobody sends unprompted. The syllabus says the course covers sampling; the schedule says session nineteen was forty minutes of small-group coding with the instructor circulating.
- 2
Inventory the activities and reconcile the minutes
Activity types with instance counts and minutes, reconciled against scheduled contact time. A gap between those two numbers is usually an activity with no artefact, which is exactly the kind the conversion is about to lose.
- 3
Code the naive conversion before designing anything
Write what a record-the-lectures conversion would leave, then count the interaction types it delivers. This is the number that reframes the job from a media project into a design project, and it is about your own course.
- 4
Convert each activity, then price the build
One row at a time, never a strategy for the whole course. Then the media list with its ratios stated and the tracker with owners, where the workload planner matters because live clinics and facilitated threads are recurring instructor time.
Frequently asked questions
Is this template free?
Yes. Download the three documents and three sheets as Word and CSV files with nothing to sign up for. Opening it as a working space, where the interaction counts and the production hours recompute as you fill in activities, needs an account. The rest sit in the template library.
What format are the downloaded files?
Three Word documents and three CSV sheets in one zip. The sheets open in Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets and arrive carrying the worked methods course, so the two codings and the production ratios are visible before you replace anything with your own course.
Where do the four interaction types come from?
The federal definition of distance education requires regular and substantive interaction and lists what substantive interaction includes, of which an activity needs at least two. Interpretation varies by institution and your accreditor decides what satisfies it, so the pack uses the list as a design checklist.
Does this mean the course has to be synchronous?
No. Four of the eight properly converted activities on the worked course are asynchronous, and two of the synchronous ones are short. The map exists to stop a fifty-minute facilitated discussion becoming a link to a video, not to argue for live sessions.
Why cap recorded segments at twelve minutes?
Because a segment has to be findable in week eleven by a student who needs one idea from it. A twelve-minute file named for the question it answers is findable. A fifty-minute file named Week 4 Part 2 is not, and no amount of module tidying fixes that.
Are captions really a separate line in the budget?
Yes, and they are the line most often missing. WCAG asks that captions are provided for all prerecorded audio content in synchronised media, and machine captions get technical vocabulary wrong. At four minutes of correction per finished minute the worked course carries 42.0 hours.
How is this different from a course design template?
A design template starts from outcomes and builds forwards. This starts from a course that already works in a room and protects the parts of it that have no artefact. Once converted, alignment and graded work still belong in the course design pack, and the programme view in the curriculum mapping pack.
Find out what your conversion is about to delete
Send the syllabus and the session-by-session schedule. The first pass inventories the activities, reconciles the minutes against scheduled contact time, and codes what a record-the-lectures conversion would leave you with.
Convert a real course