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  • The Transition from Solo-to-Team Course Design

    By Joshua Kim January 5, 2011 11:00 pm EST

    One of the most important, but least remarked upon, higher ed trends over the past 10 years has been the transition from an individual (instructor) course design methodology to one that involves a team. This transition is being driven by the growth of online and hybrid courses and programs, as well as systematic course re-design efforts such as those advocated and supported by the National Center for Academic Transformation.

    When I first started teaching full-time (as a visiting professor at WVU in the sociology department in 1997), the university supplied me with a room, the department provided past copies of old syllabi, and from there on out I was on my own. It was up to me to design, deliver, and evaluate the course.

    Nowadays I'm involved in developing 15 courses for a new hybrid program, a process that requires the inputs and coordination of an entire team of subject matter, learning design, technology, and media experts. A core team of learning designers and senior curriculum specialists collaborates closely with faculty members on the course design, curriculum development, and the creation of active learning exercises.

    Our core course design team spends significant time interfacing and seeking advice from colleagues in the Library, the Educational Technologies group, and our Center for the Advancement of Learning. Creating and supporting the technical infrastructure for the program requires the contributions of a range of talented technical professionals through the Institution, from system administrators to developers to media specialists.

    In developing the template that will serve for all of our courses we reached out to Dr. Deborah Everhart, Chief Architect at Blackboard, for advice on guidance on best-practices and course design. Dr. Everhart and her team of product designers, quality assurance managers, and usability specialists provided in-depth and detailed feedback during web conferences and in writing.

    While it is undeniably true that at team approach to course design requires a great commitment of resources than the traditional solo-instructor methodology, I firmly believe that the transition to a team approach will prove to be the most important (and positive) trend in higher ed over the next two decades. Here's why:

    A) Greater Quality: Having lived through the transition from the solo-to-team approach for course design in my professional life, I can attest that the quality of the courses (that at least I've been involved in) has dramatically improved. Courses are complicated productions, and having the benefits of a range of skilled educators and professionals all contributing to the course can only result in an improved design. In grad school I didn't learn anything about how people learn, or how to teach effectively, I learned how to create new knowledge in my discipline. Today, I'm very happy I can combine the skills of passionate educators and teachers with people trained in learning design and instructional technology, not to mention library science, media and technology.

    B) Greater Transparency and Opportunities for Replication and Diffusion: The beauty of courses designed in an LMS is that they can be seen. At this point, the unfortunate norm is that these courses are not viewable across institutions. With a few notable exceptions, we do not enjoy opportunities to learn from best practices in course design from other schools and educators. But I think that this is going to change. Efforts like the Next Generation Learning Challenge represent one possible route for the sharing of best practices in course design and delivery across institutions. The pay-off should be lower costs and higher quality, as the best courses are adopted by a wider number of IHE's. We will start to see a cultural shift in which colleges and universities seek to incorporate the best designs and materials from peer institutions, and in return earn status and respect (not to mention supporting they're larger educational missions) by sharing course designs. This is an area that I very much hope the for-profit education providers will actively participate and contribute.

    Are you working on a course design team?

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Comments on The Transition from Solo-to-Team Course Design

  • Show me the numbers
  • Posted by Brian Mulligan , Open Learning Coordinator at Institute of Technology Sligo, Ireland on January 6, 2011 at 8:00am EST
  • It's funny but I 'feel' the opposite. I feel that the huge extra cost of communication and pandering to everyone's point of view in the development of online courses does not generate enough of an improvement in quality to justify itself, except in courses that are going to be reused very large numbers of times. I feel that one good teacher with modest skills in learning technology can deliver far better value for money, particularly when you consider that they are working in a changing landscape where they will have to make constant updates.

    Now the question is how can we tell where the truth of this matter lies? Has anyone any evidence to shed some light on this? That's not a rhetorical question by the way, I've been looking out for such evidence for a while. This area is a cross-over between financial and e-learning research and does not seem to be that popular. So if any readers can point me in the right direction, I would appreciate it.
  • The sliding scale of collaboration
  • Posted by Deborah Everhart , Chief Architect and Adjunct Assistant Professor at Blackboard and Georgetown University on January 6, 2011 at 10:45am EST
  • Certainly there's a great deal of variation in how and why faculty collaborate on course development. Some of this is tied to our proclivity toward openness (see for example Maria H. Andersen's Educause article, http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume45/ToShareorNottoShareIsThattheQu/209321). And other factors include whether or not we have been introduced to this practice in our disciplinary communities and at our institutions. As ed tech specialists, there's much we can do to foster these community activities for at least shared ideas, if not full-blown collaborative course development.

    Like Josh, I had little more than a sample syllabus when I started teaching, and so many of us have started out that way that we think it's normal. Do we really expect to get quality teaching out of people who have no training or experience and may not even have a strong support network, or may be too embarrassed to ask for help (I confess I was, way back when)? It's great to see that the ease of online sharing and collaboration is providing more opportunities to improve teaching that do not necessitate expensive curriculum development teams (such teams in my experience do AMAZING work, but not everyone has access to them and they're usually not very scalable-- hence back to the useful variation in types of collaboration).

    My own course development and teaching expertise has been enhanced enormously by my long-term participation as a Director in the Blackboard Exemplary Course Program. With the other Directors and a large (150+) team of volunteer reviewers, we review hundreds of courses, provide detailed feedback, and celebrate and share best practices. This free program is just one example of many, many opportunities for faculty to share and collaborate (deadline for this year's course submissions is later this month-- see blackboard.com/ecp).

    On the other end of the spectrum re: large investments in holistic course redesign (esp. for intro courses with high enrollments), I restate Josh's reference to NCAT. This organization has rigorous research demonstrating that systematic course redesign can effectively reduce costs and increase student success. And if all of us could accomplish BOTH of those goals, even with a small effort on the sliding scale, then we will have done something important!
  • Instructional design teams
  • Posted by Jim Farmer at instructional media + magic inc. on January 6, 2011 at 12:15pm EST
  • There is a long history of team design of course materials. Florida State University teamed with the Open University in the UK. This was ongoing when some of the Arizona State community college leaders joined as observers in 1998.The OU teams included faculty experts in the field and instructional designers as well as those who would be producing the media for the course.

    OU went further by assessing the effectiveness of the learning materials—how well did students meet their learning objectives? In addition OU often compared student progress in their courses against the classical lecture used in other UK universities to ensure quality. These processes were documented in a series of papers and book by Diana Laurillard, now with the University of London. Her 1993 book “Rethinking University Teaching: A Framework for the Effective Use of Educational Technology” and 2002 Educause Review article “Rethinking Teaching for the Knowledge Society” are excellent overviews. Recordings from several of her presentations in Australia are also available.

    Course design now is being extended to include formative assessments to assist learners and detailed learning objectives used to monitor a student’s learning trajectory. The potential use of learning analytics identify students needing special attention and, from a class perspective, how to improve instruction.

    These methods, including coaches, are being used by Tiffin University and Altius Education that Inside Higher Ed has labeled “a new model community college.”

  • Yeah, where's the evidence? Where's the opportunity cost?
  • Posted by Jim Luke , Professor, Economics at Lansing Community College on January 6, 2011 at 12:15pm EST
  • I'm with Brian on this. Show me the numbers. I don't care what a bunch of self-selected "experts" think is a "good" or "great" course. There's only one panel that matters: the students who take the course. Show me the success rates. Show me the performance on assessments.

    The claim that NCAT has evidence showing that "comprehensive course redesign" results in better performance as Deborah cites doesn't address the issue here or the claim of the blog post at all. Let's see, NCAT compares courses with no major effort put into the design/prep to courses where significant resources were dedicated to design and prep. Then, news flash, the courses with effort and resources applied did better. Well duh. Joshua's major point was that teams of (presumably professors and instructional designers) were more effective and more efficient than having individual professors do it. NCAT's work doesn't test for that. Nor does NCAT account for the opportunity costs of the massive resources they dedicate to a course redesign when they do it. All NCAT demonstrates is the course redesign helps outcomes. It doesn't show that their method or approach is either efficient or the best at doing that.

    As a professor at a community college I'm frustrated at this obsession among "experts" to find or develop the "best courses" and "best lectures". There's no such thing unless you specify the context: who the students are, why they are there, what else is happening, and what else they know. A course can only be "exemplary" with relation to a particular set of students in a particular context.
  • Opportunities for Transparency = Greater Quality
  • Posted by Jennifer Staley , Director, Instructional Design at American Public University System (APUS) on January 6, 2011 at 3:00pm EST
  • At American Public University System (APUS), in an effort to improve course quality, the Instructional Development and Design team practices a collaborative process to course designed. Not only do we use familiar project management tools and techniques, but we have leveraged a few Web 2.0 tools to enhance our communication, collaboration and community. Collaboration is woven throughout the entire “lifecycle” of the course development and design process from the beginning with the involvement of many different groups across the University “enterprise,” no matter if it is a small or large redesign effort. We then evaluate the outcomes of a course design project to determine which factors are impacting our students, and in which ways and we have seen positive results in the key areas of student satisfaction: knowledge acquisition, content integration and a stronger connection with faculty.

    While opportunities for content replication and diffusion are still emerging, the tools: processes and effective practices, through which courses are created, are shared now, however it may not seem apparent to us as we have not yet found the “right” venues to support this type of collaboration. However, I know we have all experienced evidence of such at educational conferences, blogs & twitter chats, perusing various exemplary opportunities and programs provided by universities or third party vendors. It is posts such as this that continue the dialogue so that we can build upon each other’s knowledge and apply it to our own environments.

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