With a set of skills as goals in place, you can then think about how to ensure that your students develop them. You have to build into the course ways for students to internalize the material. Instructors who worry about covering a specific amount of content are likely to skimp on the time students need to develop skills. Skills are more important than content because skills are more likely to be transferable to new situations than is knowledge of facts. Once you know how you will ensure that students achieve the goals, you can decide what parts of the traditional subject matter lend themselves to accomplishing the goals.
Content comes in at the end of the process.
The inverted approach to the way I used to design courses that is described above is appropriate for any course, taught in any manner, but it is very important in designing an on-line course. Unless you have clear ideas about what the students will be doing to develop the skills that represent the goals, the course will not differ significantly from a correspondence course. Now an example of teaching on-line and traditional courses. Water pollution is a topic covered in both of the introductory service courses I teach. I introduce the subject in the traditional course by discussing septic systems.