- Video Tip - Emotional Intelligence 101
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- Top Tips - Designing Minds
- From the Community - Unlocking Successful Potential
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Watch this video for insight into how engagement with negative emotion provides lessons from those experiences. As you watch, consider which aspects of emotional intelligence your courses currently support and where additional opportunities for reflection or collaboration might be introduced.
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Registration Closes March 30 |
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Cultivating Emotional Intelligence in Online Courses |
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Online courses are integral to many discipline programs within higher education, creating the need for rigorous and creative course design for learner engagement and satisfaction. While the teaching faculty determine the program foci of these courses, there are many “soft skills” that are essential for personal and professional development that cross discipline boundaries, i.e., communication, conflict resolution, leadership, group work, etc. Today, many hiring managers indicate these skills are just as important, if not more so, than specific discipline training and expertise (Mineo, 2025; Davis, 2025; Dulewicz, 2000).
Emotional intelligence (EI) is increasingly recognized as a critical competency for academic and professional success as it fosters self-awareness, self-regulation, social awareness, and relationship management (Anziano, 2025). Within learning contexts, EI “refers to the intentional development of skills to recognize, understand, and manage emotions – both in learners and facilitators – to optimize educational outcomes” (Arora, 2025). In online courses, instructional design decisions can help create structured opportunities for students to practice EI through reflection, collaboration, and communication.
How can instructional design support the development of EI skills? Discussions between faculty and instructional designers about course design, EI, and the use of potential learning activities and tools can lead to integrative and innovative approaches for supportive facilitation. Based upon the work of Arora (2025), here are some tips and strategies to consider when applying the five aspects of EI:
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- Self-awareness: Understanding unique strengths and weaknesses can deliver better outcomes.
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ID strategies:
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Adopt a learner-centric approach – Understand faculty and learner needs to empower their design and learning journeys, i.e., personalized learning paths, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles for assessment design.
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Personalize the learning experience – Focus on connections between faculty, learners, and instructional materials to increase student-student, student-faculty, and student-materials engagements.
- Faculty strategies: Journals, short reflective essays, emotion check-ins or learning reflections
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- Self-regulation: Perseverance of thoughtful, constructive solutions promote self-awareness and empathy.
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ID strategies:
- Provide coaching and feedback to support faculty in innovative course design.
- Identify stress points and provide support when needed to model online presence engagement.
- Regularly connect with faculty to help strengthen professional bonds for increased engagement and coaching.
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Model these strategies to support faculty in promoting learner success.
- Faculty strategies: Role-playing scenarios that navigate social situations, simulations of real-life scenarios such as group projects to apply EI in context, mindfulness exercises such as imagery to develop self-regulation
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- Self-motivation: Drive toward achievement to accomplish learning objectives.
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ID strategies:
- Use collaborative learning tools to facilitate discussions and sharing.
- Build a growth mindset to encourage deeper engagement with the instructional materials using UDL principles for course and assignment structure.
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Discuss safe practice zones to design and facilitate learner expression without judgment.
- Use SMART (Short, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound) goals to motivate faculty towards course design outcomes.
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Faculty strategies: Team-based learning, collaboration to solve problems, peer teaching to reinforce communication and social skills
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Empathy: Design programs that resonate emotionally with faculty and learners by addressing real-world challenges and perspectives.
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ID strategies:
- Conduct faculty and learner need assessments to understand pain points for appropriate learning tool and design selections.
- Design for inclusive and diverse learner backgrounds and experiences by providing varied assignment/assessment design structures.
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Use active listening skills in faculty program training facilitation.
- Faculty strategies: Self-reflection journals, peer reviews, cognitive dissonance activities to manage stress and emotions, constructive feedback focused on effort and improvement
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- Social skills / Relationship management: Assist others toward the desired learning path.
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ID strategies:
- Leverage social learning through peer groups to facilitate feedback loops.
- Leverage learning communities through networks or online spaces.
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Incorporate EI into training programs and resources by design for continual competency development.
- Provide workshops focused on practical applications to model problem-based learning (PBL).
- Faculty strategies: Provide supportive course culture by leveraging social learning communities and ideas mentioned above.
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Summary
The elements of digital course design and faculty support are varied and flexible, providing different avenues of approach to accomplish similar outcomes. While course disciplines retain their own elements of rigor reflected in course materials, ignoring the impact of emotional intelligence on successful personal and professional growth is a disservice to faculty and learners alike. As part of an innovative course design approach, the integration of EI principles can inform the instructional designer-faculty relationship as a precursor to the faculty-learner relationship. Understanding the elements of EI and assisting faculty in considering the impact of EI when designing courses is a critical component of this relationship. Since higher education can provide experiences that go beyond developing discipline expertise, the ability to effectively demonstrate emotional intelligence principles during course design facilitation promotes personal and professional growth opportunities for all involved – instructional designers, faculty, and learners – one course design at a time.
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Unlocking Success Potential |
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EI & Online Course Integration Resources |
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Generative AI may have been used to support information gathering and initial drafting. All final material was reviewed, refined, and approved by human contributors.
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Bren Bedford, MNM, SFC®, Web Project Analyst II, Center for Distributed Learning, University of Central Florida
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Florence Williams, Ph.D., Associate Instructional Designer, Center for Distributed Learning, University of Central Florida
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