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Closed campuses, working remotely, and physical distancing have changed the way we work, teach, learn, shop, attend conferences, and interact with family and friends. But the Covid-19 pandemic has not changed what we know about creating high-end online education. Two decades of research has shown that online education often fails to fulfill its promise, and the emergency shift to remote instruction has, for many, justified their distrust and dislike of online learning. Low interactivity remains a widely recognized short-coming of current online offerings. Low interactivity results, in part, from many faculty not feeling comfortable being themselves online. The long-advocated for era of authentic assessments is needed now more than ever. Finally, greater support is needed for both underrepresented students and for faculty to move beyond basic online instruction to create a strong continuum of care between the teaching and learning environment and the student support infrastructure. For those who have been long-term champions of online education, it has never been more important to confront the three biggest challenges that continue to haunt online education – interactivity, authenticity, and support. Only by confronting these challenges squarely can instructors, educational developers, and their institutions take huge steps towards better online instruction in the midst of a pandemic and make widespread, high-quality online education permanently part of the “new normal.”

Many Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) programs are now offered online, and most of these programs offer courses on leadership and management principles. Teaching leadership in any context presents challenges because leadership is a hazy and confounding concept. The intrinsic problems in teaching leadership are compounded by the professional context of libraries; librarianship is a feminized profession whereas being a leader is often a male-oriented construct. This confounding mix of teaching leadership informed by feminist theory is magnified by the challenge of teaching online, where the harassment of women academics (such as MIT’s Chris Bourg) is pervasive and destructive. There is a paucity of research and discussion on how to design online leadership courses in graduate MLIS programs that account for these challenges. This paper contributes to this discussion by expanding upon Baldwin, Ching, and Friesen’s grounded theory model of online course design and development. Grounded theory is an experiential methodology, and this paper aligns with Baldwin et al.’s grounded theory approach by applying constant comparison between the author’s experience designing an online graduate-level leadership course and their model.