Managing the Crisis from the Perspective of Instructional Designers: Course Design Meets Faculty Development

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, online education was on the rise, specifically mobile learning (EDUCAUSE, 2019). Before the pandemic, there were lots of questions about whether the trend of online courses in higher education would stay and if so, how to make online courses successful and accessible (Moloney & Oakley, 2010). The COVID-19 pandemic hurdled universities across the globe towards distance learning whether faculty were prepared for it or not (Bolliger & Halupa, 2022; Cutri & Mena, 2020). Due to the speed with which programs and courses had to be moved online, seemingly overnight, colleges and universities around the world had varying approaches to this shift in learning (Pregowska, Masztalerz, Garlinska, & Osial, 2021). As the pandemic wavers on, and colleges and universities try to figure out their next steps, one thing is clear, students, administration, and various stakeholders want more online course options. (Guppy,Verpoorten, Boud, Lin, Tai, & Bartolic, 2022; Shankar, Arora, & Binz-Scharf, 2021). Public institutions accounted for 85.3% of in-state exclusive distance education enrollment in 2020, up from 78.7% in 2019 (Schwartz, 2021). Yet, even before the mass shift to remote instruction, demand for online courses and programs has only increased (EDUCAUSE, 2022). As a result, instructional designers and other development staff on university campuses are faced with more responsibility and workload, and faculty who may not always be prepared to shift into a new modality. In defining collaborative relationships, however, it is imperative that we strive to meet faculty where they are in their journey. In order to establish a process that met administrative demands for scale while building faculty trust, it became essential to shift from an ad hoc, idiosyncratic model to one that strives to develop faculty knowledge of learning theory, technical expertise, and pedagogical shifts before and as they teach online (Shelton, Saltsman, Hostrom, & Pedersen, 2014). 

As any instructional designer is aware, there are a variety of instructional design models for developing courses (i.e., ADDIE, Dick and Carey, Kemp Design Model, etc.). When working with faculty, our aim is not to make faculty experts on the various design models. Instead, our goal is to help them seamlessly move through the instructional design stages to successfully develop an effective and efficient course. As well as help them harness their technology skills as many faculty have needed additional assistance when it comes to online teaching readiness Bolliger & Halupa (2022). Like many instructional design units across the globe, we found ourselves looking to restructure the way we assisted faculty with their course development process during the pandemic (Abramenka-Lachheb, Lachheb, de Siqueira, & Huber, 2021; Streveler, & Smith, 2020).  

Our course development model works to establish a collaborative relationship between instructional designers and faculty through a coaching and mentorship process which is synonymous with the origins of instructional design (Halupa, 2019). With the modalities of teaching ever-shifting as the pandemic wavering it became increasingly important to continue working to increase the confidence and competence of individual faculty as they learn to design and develop an online course (Boyd, Andersen, Ludwig, & Jasperson, 2021). As we began to rethink the instructional design practices in our own office, we knew that we wanted to take a faculty development approach. The relationship between our faculty and instructional designers' endeavors to help faculty foster the urge to become better at teaching online and reinforce the need to improve student learning (Pink, 2011). An essential outcome of the development process is to guide faculty as they learn to apply core design practices and develop digital fluency (Nilsen, Almås, & Gram, 2020; Romero-Hall & Jaramillo Cherrez, 2022).  

During the early days of the pandemic, as remote teaching became the norm and faculty from all ranks needed to gain competence in online learning, our office developed an Online Course Design Primer (OCDP) that was designed as a cohort workshop lead by a team of instructional designers and faculty mentors. It served as a practical introduction to online course development, providing faculty with the resources to design and develop online courses based on their existing content. Each module expanded on Blackboard’s tools and settings to help faculty create assessments and meaningful engagement opportunities in both synchronous and asynchronous delivery formats. Between the 2020 summer and fall terms, 640 faculty participated in The Primer (42% earned a digital badge for their completion). When asked if The Primer made them feel more confident about teaching their online courses, 67.2% agreed that it did (8.6% of faculty disagreed).  

While past efforts to design online undergraduate programs at our institutions were seen as a boutique service for select programs, the pandemic brought an unprecedented demand from faculty and students to design higher quality online courses across the University. With so many more online courses needing support, our office worked to design a model that incorporated both best practices in course design and faculty development. The model was first piloted in the Summer 21 term with 18 faculty, following a 15-week schedule. The goals of the pilot were to focus on designing higher quality online courses, while also teaching faculty best practices of using the campus LMS. The Digital Learning team focused on a service-oriented approach that involves actively working with faculty to plan instruction with course objectives, instructional strategies, activities, and assessments that align to objectives without necessarily providing overt guidance in more advanced competences (Varvel, 2007).  

As previously mentioned, the first pilot occurred during the summer semester, which brought its own unique set of challenges since this is a time when most faculty traditionally aren’t working due to 9-month contracts. Faculty initially struggled to acclimate to the design model, especially regarding workload and technology skills. Another issue, which is one that most instructional designers struggle with no matter the model, is the clear delineation of roles between the instructional designer and the faculty member (Halupa, 2019). Through subsequent iterations, our office has worked on addressing these issues to aid in making each iteration stronger. From this, we have now developed a more substantial kick-off meeting that clearly delineates the roles of the instructional designer and teaching faculty member, a 2-hour workshop that allows for pre-work to be completed with the instructional designer such as starting to develop a course outline, and various supplementary material that can be utilized to aid in any gaps in the faculty members’ prior knowledge.  

This presentation will focus on the development, implementation, and success of this program from an instructional designer and director’s point of view. Through this presentation, we will address both the challenges and successes of implementing this model. Further, we will explore the collaborative effort of our team at large to continuously adapt and improve the program based on each iteration of the model, the feedback that we receive, and the needs of the university. Attendees will leave this session with a multilevel understanding of the unique challenges of implementing a condensed instructional design model across an R1 university.