Four Common Mistakes You May Be Making In Your Online Courses

Discover the four biggest pitfalls in online course design that could be undermining engagement and effectiveness in your institution's online education delivery.

Mistake #1: Your LMS is a content dumping ground

One of the most pervasive issues in online course design is the tendency to treat your LMS as little more than a digital filing cabinet. Course builders often fall into the trap of uploading PDFs, lecture recordings, and reading lists without considering the learner's journey through the material. This approach transforms what should be an engaging learning experience into a repository of disconnected resources that learners must navigate independently, often resulting in confusion, disengagement, and poor learning outcomes.

The root of this problem lies in a fundamental misunderstanding of what an LMS, such as Canvas, should be. Rather than a storage system, your LMS should function as a carefully designed learning environment that guides learners through a structured, scaffolded experience. Each piece of content should have a clear purpose within the broader pedagogical framework, and the relationship between different resources should be explicitly signalled to learners.

Rather than a storage system, your LMS should function as a carefully designed learning environment.

The solution?

To address this mistake, begin by mapping out the learning journey before uploading any content. Consider the sequence in which learners will encounter materials and how each element builds upon the previous one. Implement clear signposting and navigation structures that make the learning pathway transparent. Use modules or units that chunk content into manageable, thematically coherent sections. Most importantly, ensure that every resource is accompanied by context. Context helps explain:

• why learners are being encouraged to engage with this material,

• how it connects to learning outcomes,

• and what they should do with the information.

By structuring it intentionally, you turn your LMS from a static content dump into a dynamic learning experience that actively supports learner progress and achievement.

Mistake #2: Overwhelming learners by misunderstanding interactivity

In the pursuit of creating 'engaging' online courses, many course designers have inadvertently created the opposite effect by equating engagement with interactivity. The result is courses packed with superfluous clickable elements, animated graphics, excessive multimedia components, and interactive widgets that ultimately overwhelm rather than motivate learners. This confusion between genuine cognitive engagement and superficial interactivity represents a significant design flaw that can actually hinder learning and not enhance it.

True engagement occurs when learners are cognitively processing information, making connections, and constructing understanding—not simply clicking through a series of interactive elements. A learner mindlessly clicking through a branching scenario is less engaged than one quietly reading a well-crafted case study and reflecting on its implications. The over-reliance on interactivity often stems from anxiety about maintaining learner attention in online environments, but cognitive engagement matters far more than behavioural activity.

Focus on designing for cognitive engagement and incorporating interactive elements strategically.

The solution?

To avoid this, focus on designing for cognitive engagement and incorporating interactive elements strategically. Use activities that are designed for meaningful engagement, such as those that support one or more learning types. Also, remember that balance is essential. For example, some moments in a learning journey may call for a personal, self-reflective piece (such as logging in a journal) over collaborative group projects. Other moments may better suit activities that allow learners to experiment with concepts or require authentic application of knowledge (such as an unassessed exam or recorded video submission).  Design learning experiences that respect learners' cognitive capacity and guide them towards deep, meaningful engagement with course content. Remember that the best online courses include clarity, purposeful design, and well-structured content.

Mistake #3: Underestimating consistency

Visual consistency might seem like a minor concern compared to pedagogical considerations, but its impact on the learner experience is profound and frequently underestimated. When courses lack consistency in fonts, colours, heading styles, button designs, and layout structures, learners expend unnecessary cognitive energy trying to decode the visual environment rather than focusing on learning content. This inconsistency creates a sense of unprofessionalism that can undermine learners' confidence in the course quality and, by extension, the value of their learning.

The problem typically emerges when multiple faculty members or learning designers contribute to course development without agreed-upon design standards, or when courses evolve with different people making ad-hoc modifications. The result is a patchwork aesthetic that signals disorganisation and lack of attention to detail. Beyond mere aesthetics, inconsistency creates practical barriers. When learners cannot predict where to find information or what visual cues indicate important content, navigation becomes frustrating, and learning efficiency decreases.

It's also important to consider consistency not as a purely aesthetic concern but as an accessibility and usability imperative—consistent design reduces cognitive load, supports learners with diverse needs, and demonstrates the institutional commitment to quality that learners deserve. When courses look polished and professional, learners can direct their full attention to what matters most: learning.

It's also important to consider consistency not as a purely aesthetic concern but as an accessibility and usability imperative.

The solution?

Addressing this issue requires establishing and maintaining clear design standards from the outset. Develop a style guide that specifies fonts, colour palettes, heading hierarchies, button styles, spacing conventions, and layout templates. This needn't be elaborate—even a simple one-page reference document can ensure consistency across your courses. Many tools, such as insendi's Canvas course creation tool, allow you to create reusable templates in your LMS that enforce these standards automatically, making consistency achievable without additional workload. Additionally, regular audits of existing courses to identify and correct inconsistencies will progressively improve the learner experience.

Mistake #4: Overrelying on AI

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence tools has created both opportunities and pitfalls in online course design. Whilst AI can undoubtedly accelerate certain aspects of course development, an increasing number of course designers are leaning too heavily on AI-generated content without sufficient critical evaluation or pedagogical consideration. This overreliance manifests in many ways, such as:

• generic course descriptions,

• learning outcomes that lack specificity,

• assessment questions that fail to assess higher-order thinking,

• and content that sounds plausible but lacks the nuance, context, and disciplinary expertise that characterise quality teaching.

The core issue is not that AI tools are inherently problematic, but rather that they are being used as replacements for (rather than supplements to) pedagogical expertise and thoughtful design. AI-generated content often lacks the contextual awareness of your specific learners, your institutional culture, and the particular learning challenges within your discipline. Furthermore, over-reliance on AI can result in courses that feel impersonal and disconnected, missing the authentic voice and expertise that learners value from their educators. There are also legitimate concerns about accuracy, bias, and the potential perpetuation of outdated pedagogical approaches that AI systems may have absorbed from their training data.

Make sure to choose AI features that are secure, guardrailed, and don't publish content without permission.

The solution?

This lies in adopting a judicious, strategic approach to AI integration in course design. Use AI as a productivity tool to help streamline your existing design practices, and make sure to choose AI features that are secure, guardrailed, and don't publish content without permission, such as insendi's AI features. Always review AI-generated content critically, checking for accuracy, relevance, appropriate complexity, and alignment with your learning outcomes. Ensure that your courses retain the authentic expertise, disciplinary voice, and contextual relevance that only human educators can provide. Used wisely, AI can enhance efficiency without compromising quality; used carelessly, it can undermine the very foundations of effective course design.