Jason, Although you have many tools at you disposal, you have to do a critical analysis of the course and breakdown what it is that you want to do, maybe something that has been really successful in an ongroud course, and then imagine how it could be accomplished online. You may also need to re-vision aspects of the course that can be accomplished differently and maybe better online. For example, if you want to incorporate extensive discussion, you need to break down what you normally examine in these discussions and determine how best to reach that goal - maybe discussion forums with specific questions and leading prompts; maybe some of the discussions become student reflective writings; maybe other discussion content becomes part of a large intergrated project. The tools are almost endless. Synchronous tools can still give you the "looking at them" piece and still provide you with that realtime immediately interaction. Sometimes it means a revisioning of the course from a pedagogy perspective. Shifting from the sage on the stage to the facilitator role. Shifting to a project-based learning model and project-based assessments. Any course going online should go through these steps in my opinion. Herbert Brown III