You can deliver your short course online, face to face, or with a blend of the two.
How you choose to present your short course will depend on many factors, including your learners’ needs, what you want them to achieve, and what resources are available. These factors will also help you to choose a mode of delivery for your course, which can be face-to-face, online, or a blend of the two.
Face-to-face
You can offer a course face-to-face on campus or at a dedicated location that may or may not be run by UCL. You might choose this mode of delivery if:
- learners need to use specific equipment, such as lab technology or studio spaces
- your course relies heavily on physical or group-based activities.
Online
Online courses can be delivered online through UCL Extend or FutureLearn. You might choose this mode of delivery if you know your course has wide-reaching or global appeal and your learners may have commitments that prevent travel to London.
Online courses can be offered flexibly and take multiple forms, including:
- self-paced and unfacilitated: learners move through the course at their own pace with individual learning activities
- cohort-based with little or no facilitation: learners join a defined cohort with a course start and end date, often working to deadlines and interacting with other learners, but there is limited or no facilitation from a tutor
- cohort-based and facilitated: learners move through the course at the same time as others, often working to deadlines and participating in activities with other learners and the tutor(s).
Blended
You might want to combine the two modes above and offer a blend of face-to-face and online content and learning activities. The degree to which you blend these modes depends on how you want to run your course and what will work best for your learners. For example, you could offer:
- all taught sessions face-to-face and use an online platform to host the course learning materials
- some taught sessions face-to-face and use an online platform to facilitate related discussions or collaborative activities and assessments for learners to complete at another time.
If you decide to teach your course online or as a blend of online and face-to-face activities you'll need to choose a platform. Read more about choosing an appropriate online platform for your course.