Abstract: Many online instructors, which includes traditional faculty with limited online experience and online instructors with minimal to no teaching experience, may be considered novices in the online instructional context. This paper articulates a unified online learning framework that: describes the higher education online instructional environment; describes the interaction between student inputs and instructor outputs through interaction; and provides instructional prescriptions that serve of scaffolds to support novice online instructors. Further research is needed to validate this and similar frameworks designed to support improved online teaching and learning.