The guidelines and benchmarks provide the wider context and characteristics that #dariahTeach courses should adopt to be concise to the platform’s aims. To facilitate effective course design, start with reflecting on the following aspects:

• Audience
• Activities
• Assignments
• Materials

Who is your audience?

#dariahTeach has identified different types of audiences. These types can be summarized as:

• Instructors teaching Digital Humanities, who can use the learning materials as appropriate to their own institutional settings and learning outcomes;
• Instructors in other disciplines, who can draw on and integrate these materials into more subject-based teaching;
• Students at institutions that have Digital Humanities expertise who can supplement their institutional learning with #dariahTeach materials;
• Students who are not at institutions that have Digital Humanities expertise but who can individually develop the skills and methods, as well as understand the theoretical basis, to engage in Digital Humanities research.
• Lone learners (students and professionals) active in other disciplines that want to supplement their subject-based knowledge with #dariahTeach materials.

What are your learning outcomes?

Each course, either for online or classroom delivery, should indicate the learning outcomes to be achieved by the end of the course. Instructors must ensure that these learning outcomes are secured, even though they may redesign elements to fit the online delivery of the course. #dariahTeach also opts for a clear statement of learning outcomes regarding knowledge and skills, as well as for a reasoned coherence between learning outcomes, the e-learning strategy, the scope of the learning materials, and the assessment methods used.

What are the activities, assignments and materials that will support learning?

The #dariahTeach course elements are short lectures, diverse, multimodal content (text, audio, video), interactive quizzes, tests and assignments, embedded reading recommendations and multilingual content. Designing a #dariahTeach course should allow sufficient interactivity (student-to-content or student-to-student) to encourage active engagement. In addition, it should also enable students to test their knowledge, understanding and skills. In order to do so, courses should include independent learning materials to provide learners with regular feedback through self-assessment activities or tests. Finally, it is highly desirable that the course design, development and evaluation involve both academic and technical aspects.