The COVID-19 pandemic brought challenges and opportunities for higher education and one of the important areas was online education. Especially in design field, Online Problem-Based Learning has emerged as a promising method. This paper explores the potential of online-PBL and how it can be developed through a prototype approach. An action research in Indian HEI shows insights regarding the potentiality of online-PBL and application of a prototype approach to educational development activities. A concept of “educational probes” was proposed as a method to design educational program.