• Providing a variety of communication channels such as, e-mail, telephone, video, discussion forums and online conferences.
• Encouraging student-to-teacher and student-to-student interaction.
• Communication activities should be integrated into assignments, started early in the semester and a minimum bi-weekly communication.
• Using Netiquette.

Maintaining standards of academic quality is the responsibility of the academic departments, colleges and schools. Because of the innovation of the World Wide Web as a means of instruction, it is sometimes difficult to identify equivalences between the new and the more traditional mean of instruction.

There should be task submissions for students with substantial feedback on a regular basis, preferably weekly. Online courses give students more options to schedule, or to procrastinate, their course work. To replace frequent class attendance as a means of pacing and motivation, experience has shown that regular and somewhat more frequent submission deadlines are effective. It is especially important to create an early assignment or message for the student to the instructor. The sooner students start course work, the more likely they are to finish. Instructional quizzes built into lessons or assignments offer one opportunity for integrated, immediate feedback.

Course design should include appropriate orientation about how the course is structured and how online tools work. Although students are arriving with more knowledge about navigating through cyberspace, they still need clear statements of expectations and strategies for success. To address this need, a course should have a clearly labeled set of instructions: a separate page called “Orientation,” “Start Here,” "Read me,"etc.; a brief bit of streamed audio or video of the instructor welcoming students and providing a starting point; a face-to-face meeting on campus (though this can be a problem for students outside southern Utah), etc.

The online medium should be used for teaching and learning activities. A syllabus and a set of online tests do not constitute an online course. Since the usual image of a teacher is a person standing at the front of a classroom talking, it is natural to assume that is what teaching is. But teaching is not primarily a set of motor skills (standing or pacing and talking): what is the teacher talking about? All of that is in addition to presenting material (i.e. lecturing)! A wide range of teaching and learning actions can be incorporated into an online course.

Quality education can be achieved in online courses by following principles of good practice such as: developing courses and delivery systems which allow for frequent student-faculty contact and prompt feedback, using collaborative and active learning techniques, provide adequate time on task and synthesizing experiences, and having a respect for diverse talents and learning styles and communicating high expectations [Chickering, et. al.1987], [Education Commission, 1996].