Intentional Course Design: Introducing GOA’s Design Principles

Great learning experiences are intentionally designed. At GOA, we believe learning should be relational, purpose-driven, and experiential. But especially in online environments, those outcomes do not happen automatically.

“In online learning, belonging, engagement, and rigor are created through intentionality,” says Amanda Burch, who contributes to GOA's design leadership. “Design principles must be incorporated with far greater thoughtfulness because time, space, interaction, and feedback do not emerge as organically as in a brick-and-mortar classroom.”

Rigor, relevance, and relationships must be intentionally designed together, and our eight design principles ensure that happens.

As our course catalog continued to expand, we recognized the need for greater consistency and coherence across courses. “We developed design principles to create shared language and decision-making clarity across course design,” says Burch. “We needed to create a foundation regardless of different learning designers, teachers, or disciplines.” Rather than inventing something new, the team clarified what had already been working. “We made implicit practices explicit and repeatable,” Burch continues.

Drawing from our earlier competency-based learning work related to student agency, equity, and transfer, the team synthesized our mission, vision, values, and pedagogy into practical guidance that created a coherent system that captures long-standing practices while also clarifying priorities in GOA’s online, globally networked learning environments.

This clarity bridges the principles that consistently show up in high-quality GOA courses with the concrete, day-to-day decisions that shape a student's experience. It ensures that relational learning is not left to personality or chance. “I will always stress — good design is about constraints!” says Burch. “They help designers and teachers prioritize what matters most, make tradeoffs explicit, and design with intention rather than accumulation.”

In other words, design principles prevent drift.

Because online learning does not rely on proximity or spontaneity, every opportunity for connection, reflection, and feedback must be intentionally designed. At GOA, teachers enter a course with what Burch describes as a “ready-to-teach” curriculum, meaning the design team front-loads the design principles in the course development process. “They shape early decisions during the formal project kickoff, when scope is defined, priorities are set, and key design tensions are surfaced, particularly in determining depth vs. breadth, assessment strategy, and student agency,” Burch says. “They are then revisited iteratively throughout development and feedback cycles — used as a shared reference point when refining assessments, pacing learning, designing interactions, or resolving tradeoffs. Rather than a checklist at the end, the principles function as a throughline that guides decisions from concept to implementation.”

The expansion of GOA’s AP courses created an opportunity to further clarify and strengthen our course design process. As the team aligned to external standards, exams, and pacing requirements, they deepened their discipline around alignment and made design tradeoffs even more intentional, ultimately sharpening the design principles themselves.“We’ve been intentionally refining how we balance rigor and exam preparation with student-led learning, ensuring that inquiry, choice, reflection, and application remain central,” says Burch.

This upfront course design work ensures that all students, regardless of which teacher or section they're in, encounter the same core commitments. Teachers can then focus on facilitating, coaching, and building relationships while students regularly make choices, reflect on their growth, receive actionable feedback, and demonstrate learning through meaningful application. 

Over the next few months, we will explore each of our design principles in depth, including examples of how they show up in GOA courses. For now, here are our eight design principles:

When these principles are well-implemented, students experience learning that is human, purposeful, and empowering. "They feel known and connected to their teacher, peers, and global perspectives," says Burch. "They understand why the work matters and can apply their learning beyond the course."

This Insights Hub series explores how GOA designs learning — intentionally, relationally, and with purpose. Through concrete examples from GOA courses, we make our design principles visible, showing how student agency, meaningful assessment, and frequent feedback shape rigorous, relevant online learning. The series also highlights how these same principles guide our approach to AP course design, building on what we do well while continuing to evolve in response to student needs.