Despite the continued deployment of Cisco e-learning courses in Ugandan higher education institutions, little is known about the students’ learning outcomes from the perspective of instructional design quality. The current study sought to empirically validate the extent to which the instructional design quality characteristics of Cisco e-learning courses as perceived by students influenced their learning outcomes. Specifically, the paper narrowed down to students’ perceived satisfaction, academic achievement and continued learning intentions with Cisco e-learning courses as predicted by course content quality, interface design quality and instructional strategies. Guided by the cross-sectional survey approach, this study made use of an e-learning instructional design quality scale that was distributed to 805 trainees who were participating in the Cisco e-learning programme from ten institutions of higher education. The data was analysed using full-fledged structural equation modelling (SEM); and the results were able to support the hypothesised model. The results further indicated that all the instructional design quality sub-constructs significantly predicted perceived satisfaction and, in turn, perceived satisfaction had an influence on continuance learning intention and achievement. The current study has, thus, added to the expanding body of literature on instructional design attributes that are critical to ODeL success and provided higher learning institutions with critical signposts regarding the efficacy of instructional design in enhancing e-learning success, especially in this era when ODeL is fast becoming an alternative approach to expanding access to educational opportunities.