Collaboration between Faculty, Instructional Design and Technology Services in Development of a Course Template for Online Learning Environments

Title:  Collaboration between Faculty, Instructional Design and Technology Services in Development of a Course Template for Online Learning Environments

Background:  Nationally, 7.1 million students are now taking online courses, and 77% of academic leaders rate student learning outcomes as the same or superior to face to face instruction.  Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK) is a framework that identifies the knowledge faculty need to teach effectively online with technology.  This was our model for creating a course delivery template in the Course Management System (CMS) that could be flexible enough to be used across colleges and programs.  To that end, we worked with instructional design (ID), faculty, IT, and administrators to develop a common template for course delivery. Collaboration occurred to identify features of a template that would span colleges/programs and be learner-centered, streamline course design, include intuitive navigation and a logical presentation, and encourage student engagement and improve student and faculty satisfaction.  Included in the development of the new course template was faculty input, instructional design, technology resources and support, our CMS platform and Quality Matters.  Faculty partnered with the instructional design team and college technology services to develop a course template that contained standardized functionality but allowed for customization as needed for particular courses.

Discussion: Faculty develop course syllabi including learning outcomes, textbook choice, content and assignments/assessments.  Instructional Designers identify flow and learning patterns, and integrate CMS tools to enhance student learning.  Instructional Technology serves as the liaison between faculty and CMS support, and identifies new technologies to support course teaching.  Major focus areas for the template included: streamlined content presentation, technology support, and academic support, and allows for development of course objectives and module level objectives for weekly content areas.

Report:   Once the template was developed, ongoing workshops occurred with full day, half day and targeted hour long training sessions to facilitate use of the template and comfort with educational tools.  Takeaways from this endeavor included: clearly identify stakeholders and include in planning and implementation, establish core principles and design the template using the core principles identified, collect data, and continuously improve.  

Conclusions: With the partnership between faculty, ID, and IT, there is more effective communication with students, students feel more engaged, questions directed to faculty are reduced, technology tools are leveraged to enhance teaching and learning, improve efficiency and save time, and innovation is maximized.