ABSTRACT
School closures and society's retooling to social distancing brought by the COVID-19 pandemic have left teachers and workplace trainers scrambling to adapt to a new reality while facing the possibility that both distance and distributed learning may be here to stay. Many are unprepared to deal with their student bodies studying from home and the necessary revamping of the curriculum to an online format. The COVID-19 crisis called to us, a group of doctoral students in distance education, with decades of combined experience, to serve in creating a scalable general blueprint for an online course, informed by our own praxis and that of seminal educator-researchers. The blueprint can be easily understood through the schematic and five-minute audio yet is enhanced with links to provide a deeper understanding of the why behind its application. We used project-based learning (PBL) theory to guide the educator in weaving the right kind, sequence, and quantity of learning interaction into their digital modules. Unintentionally, this project modeled swarm leadership, a collaborative networked effort that adapts and self-organizes in the moment, swarming in on a task of challenge and collectively innovating, organizing, and sharing responsibility. The end result was a useful public open educational resource (OER) and lifelong friendships. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021. All rights reserved.