The current economic challenge for students seeking to compete on a global scale with an advanced education has contributed to a continual rise in online enrollments (Allen & Seaman, 2010; Stern, 2009). However, Allen and Seaman (2012) reported that a persistent state of less than excellent online courses threatens to undermine the value of the educational opportunities afforded by the Internet. In spite of ongoing advances in instructional technologies, web-based higher academic pedagogies continued to demonstrate a lack of quality well into the new millennium (Means, Toyama, Murphy, Bakia, & Jones, 2009). The Means et al. (2009) study reported a perception of lower academic standards, a perception that was underscored with reports of an ongoing distrust in online courses by a majority of U.S. educators (Allen & Seaman, 2012). Given the perceptions of lower quality pedagogies, the practice of designing products for online learning has been called into question in terms of the competencies and leadership of instructional designers needed to improve the situation (Beaudoin, 2007; Kowch, 2009; Naidu, 2007; Reeves, Herrington, & Oliver, 2004; Sims & Koszalka, 2008). The purpose of the study presented in this paper was to explore the problem of quality in online course designs further to identify the critical ID competencies needed to produce effective designs for modern learning. This study has shown that multiple competencies and leadership characteristics combine to create a quality product.