OTL Roadmap to the Future of Online Teaching and Learning at WIU

During its April 22nd, 2025, meeting, WIU's Faculty Senate voted yes to the following recommendations regarding online teaching and learning.

  1. Creation of a permanent online teaching subcouncil for OTL through CIT. 
  2. Require a Universal Course Navigation and Interface (UCNI) shell for all online courses. 
  3. Require Regular and Substantive Interaction (RSI) compliance in all online courses. 
  4. Require the course development, review, and revision process for all online courses at WIU. 
  5. Prepare for accessibility regulations that will come into effect in the future. 

As of April 22, 2025, these accepted recommendations have moved to the Provost's Office for further consideration and implementation strategies. 

Our first phase and focus is to begin training and development for the newly required universal course navigation and interface (UCNI) shell for all online courses. Additionally, we are working towards moving from the D2L Brightspace Classic Content Experience to their New Content Experience. To make this transition as seamless as possible for both the UCNI and the move to D2L's New Content Experience, OTL will be working to further develop and finalize the UCNI over the Summer (2025) in preparation to begin offering training and development areas to instructors as soon as August 2025. The plan is to have all courses moved to the new UCNI and D2L's New Content Experience by the start of the Fall 2026 semester. 

To ensure that resources are available to you in a timely manner, OTL will finalize the first level of self-guided training for instructors in time for the Fall 2025 semester. Visit the resources below to learn more about the UCNI and RSI initiatives and our progress. 

Resources

Agile Project Roadmap - Phase 1

Visit this page to follow the progress of the changes.  

This image shows WIU's Online Teaching and Learning Agile Project Roadmap for Spring 2025 - Summer 2026. In May 2025 the Faculty Senate Recomendations were presented and approved, completing this stage of the projuct. OTL began developing the new Universal Cournse Navigation and Interface in the Spring of 2025. All UCNI NCE (New Content Experience) Documentation and Training Development will take place over Summer 2025 with a target completion date of August 2025. OTL completed the design and development of the new HTML 5.0 Templates for the UCNI and the Syllabus Template May 1, 2025. OTL is currently devleoping the Regular and Substantive Level 1 Training Development with a target completion date of August 2025. Faculty Training and Development will be starting during the 2025 Fall semester and running through July, 2026.