This ex post facto descriptive study examined the open-ended comments from 566 university students in their course evaluations for online courses. The results indicated that the most prevalent themes for effective online teaching are personalized feedback, instructor engagement, clear assignment instructions and expectations, an engaging course delivery, instructor knowledge, timely responses, and having practical and useful content. The results of this study are important for instructors because student perspectives contribute to students' motivation and learning. This information is vital to instructors for prioritizing areas of online course construction to include the most effective teaching and learning strategies.