More instructors at every educational level are developing online courses and adding online components to face-to-face courses on an ever-broadening array of topics each semester. This paper provides recommendations for designing and maintaining online learning environments that encourage active learning, interaction, and academic integrity based on my research on online communities during the last ten years and a two-year ethnographic case study of the development and teaching of an online undergraduate media history course. In particular, these recommendations help support students' understanding of and compliance with course requirements, and they foster the development of an active, successful, and satisfied learning community. (Contains 1 table.)