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Behind the Build: Designing for Learners, Not Lectures

Glass office building with exterior light shelves in Denver, Colorado

09Oct’25

Feature Stories, Spotlights

October 9, 2025 by Erin Bartnett

Bill Braham of the Weitzman School of Design has worked in energy and architecture—in both industry and academia—for over forty years. He’s resourceful, arrives on time, loves a deadline, and knows how to build climate-responsive, energy-efficient buildings. Every year, he teaches a course on environmental building design. A few years ago, he reworked these materials for a cohort-based online course that would be part of a new program. But in 2024, when funding changed and the online course he developed couldn’t launch, he began thinking about how he could use the materials he developed to reach a wider audience.  

He had heard about CETLI’s support for developing non-credit online courses and reached out to learn how he might efficiently transform his online course into a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). 

Discovering the Design

The first step was to meet with CETLI’s Megan Carr, Chelsea Lewis, and Ellen Rhudy, who consult with school teams on designing online learning offerings. During that discovery meeting, they discussed Braham’s goals for the MOOC, the audience he wanted to reach, as well as the value for his course and how to differentiate it from competitors’ courses.  

Since Braham already had course materials and clear learning objectives, the meeting was focused on how those materials might be adapted for a MOOC audience. Lewis offered Braham a set of guiding questions to work through before their next meeting. 

Braham determined that he wanted to reach two audiences: the general interest learner and the professional learner. Once he was clear about his audience, Braham thought about ways to engage with both sets of learners in the course videos and assessments. This, in turn, helped him map out the overall structure for the MOOC.  

Unlike in class, where I can tinker with [the lecture] the night before, and adjust, explain something a little differently, [the videos] had to be delivered pretty smoothly.
Professional photo of William W. Braham of the Weitzman School of Design
Bill Braham
Weitzman School of Design

A Well-Illustrated Sequence of Ideas

Braham decided to design the course with two learning tracks, one for each audience. All learners would move through the same seven modules. Each module would include one lesson geared toward a general audience, as well as a second lesson that goes into more technical detail for professional learners. Throughout the process, Braham was also thinking about how to promote the course. Having two tracks would help Braham market the course to a wider range of learners.  

Rhudy says Braham’s focus on the structure for modules and lessons early on, “simplified the rest of the course build while ensuring a consistent learner experience.” For MOOCs, Rhudy says, it’s important to spend time mapping out your course before you start building it. In a traditional class, you can adjust your course design as you get to know your students. “When you build this sort of asynchronous, self-paced online course,” she says, “it’s especially important to create a detailed course outline early on that helps you picture how learners are moving through the course, how much variety there is in their course experience, and whether you’re sketching out content that’s going to meet your objectives for the course.” 

Braham says this is something he learned while he was initially recording the videos. “Unlike in class, where I can tinker with [the lecture] the night before, and adjust, explain something a little differently, [the videos] had to be...delivered pretty smoothly.” His goal was to create, if not a narrative, then a “a well-illustrated sequence of ideas.” 

Reaching a New Audience   

After mapping out the sequence of ideas for his new audience, Braham says, “then it was actually super easy,” to adapt his course materials for the MOOC. It was simply a matter of editing out assignments that no longer existed or swapping out references to weeks and replacing them with modules.  

Alongside editing his videos for the MOOC format, Braham also revised the assessments for his new audience. One of the distinguishing factors between general interest and professional learners would be access to certain design tools. The assessments, therefore, had to be redesigned so learners didn't have to use design tools to complete them. Braham worked with a graduate student TA to develop new quizzes and Rhudy helped him determine the right tone for quiz feedback, as well as where to place practice quizzes and graded quizzes to best support the learner’s experience throughout the course. 

 With the materials properly calibrated for the MOOC audience, now it was time to confirm those materials would actually reach that audience. Braham worked with Denise Fitzpatrick, CETLI’s Director of Marketing & Communications, to review the user-facing content on the listing page, as well as a larger review of the overall advertising strategy, before the course launch.  

For anyone planning an online course where instructors aren't engaging with learners after the course launch, I think they’d do well to follow Bill’s example of considering the course in a holistic way from the start.
Staff Photo for Ellen Rhudy, Associate Director of Instructional Design, CETLI
Ellen Rhudy
Associate Director of Instructional Design, CETLI

Structuring for Success 

Braham’s course, Fundamentals of Bioclimatic Design, successfully launched in July 2025, and, within two months, reached over 300 learners. That audience continues to grow. 

"For anyone planning an online course where instructors aren't engaging with learners after the course launch, I think they’d do well to follow Bill’s example of considering the course in a holistic way from the start,” Rhudy says. 

Braham says the process—including brainstorming structure, clarifying his audience, revising the content and assessments for that audience, and developing a marketing plan — was worth it. “I think people should do it,” he says. “It's not that this replaces what we do here, but it helps reach a whole other audience.”  

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