The educational context has undergone significant transformations driven by technological advancements, the widespread availability of digital learning tools and resources in multiple formats, and major social challenges such as the digital divide, social inequalities, and, more recently, health-related emergencies. In response to these evolving conditions, instructional design has gained increasing relevance as a discipline that supports the development, assessment, and evaluation of instruction. Consequently, there is a growing need for tools that support and facilitate this process. The incorporation of Semantic Web technologies into education has enabled innovation in areas such as learning object interoperability, the modeling and enrichment of learning resources, and the recommendation of personalized educational content. In this context, the present article proposes OIDHE, an ontology for instructional design in higher education. This tool aims to support teachers and instructional designers through the formal representation of key concepts and relationships, including competency, assessment, competence judgment, assessment instrument, evidence, content, among others. The development of this ontology was supported by well-established ontology engineering tools and guided by experts in instructional design. Moreover, the ontology was evaluated in terms of logical consistency, overall quality, and usability, yielding notable results across all criteria.