An online academic development course, titled “Getting Started with Online Teaching”, was developed by three Irish HEIs as part of a nationally coordinated initiative to create academic development opportunities and an associated system of digital badges across the sector. The course ran over eight weeks and was a notable success in terms of its popularity and its mainstream impact with it now being offered as a mainstream CPD across a number of HEIs. A mixed methods approach consisting of a pre-survey, post survey and focus group was adopted to evaluate the original pilot and answer key questions about the participant experience. Post course survey data suggests a very high overall participant (n= 35) satisfaction rate as well as, importantly, increased levels of knowledge and confidence among the pilot cohort in relation to teaching online, and a general intention to transfer to practice. Triangulated findings suggest that participant motivation tended to revolve more around these outcomes than the achievement of a digital badge or other external validation. Findings in general suggest the Getting Started course may have succeeded largely by taking the middle ground between what are presented as two extremes on a continuum: a traditional instructionalist and “technicist” CPD model with external validation and a fully open transformative one without planned outcomes or external validation. The paper finishes by considering what models in general exist for online academic development, how and when they might best be operationalised and what success factors and metrics might and should apply for same.