Creating Learning-Centered, Networked, Integrative, and Adaptive Online Courses

University of Wisconsin Colleges Online (UW Colleges Online) (https://online.uwc.edu/) is the only fully online campus in the University of Wisconsin system. The online program (and now campus) has been offering courses as part of the UW Colleges 2-year system since 1998. These courses have supplemented the face-to-face curriculum, but UW Colleges Online has also been awarding exclusive online Associate of Arts and Science degrees. The campus enrolls about 6,000 students per year in a variety of term lengths with a catalog of about 120 courses.

Unlike many face-to-face courses, UW Colleges Online courses are developed with a faculty content expert and instructional designer who typically negotiate the course’s design to meet online design and student learning needs. The result is the development of a “master course”, which is used to distribute into several course sections each term. The development quality of the courses is an important factor to students and institution’s success, and therefore drives the instructional designer and faculty-developer’s process and design choices. The challenge in working in this environment is identifying and implementing a set of universal traits for online course design that all courses can utilize when appropriate while maintaining a sense of instructor autonomy and working with project planning and budget limitations.

In an effort to drive course design conversations toward a common sense of quality, the UWC Online instructional design team began utilizing the Quality Matters Rubric to evaluate current course designs and influence future course designs. Although the institution is not formally doing QM reviews, the Rubric has helped shape course design conversations at some level. Parallel to QM, instituting a quality course design is also influenced by instructional design theory, education technology pedagogy, eLearning design research, and practical knowledge of simply what works. This rich research field that course designers utilize, further helps define quality (Garrison, etal, 2000; Mishra, P., & Koehler, 2006; Reigeluth & Carr-Chellman (2009). Of note, in a recent AAC&U publication, Open and Integrative: Designing Liberal Education for the New Digital Ecosystem, (Bass & Eynon, 2016), the authors present a framework vision that may help shape the conversation towards a practice that utilizes the best technological affordances and impacts course design within the larger digital ecosystem. Their work is summarized in the framework below:

• Learner-centered – where engagement with materials and the community is encouraged and strengthened through digital materials in order to empower learners
• Networked – learning takes place both within and beyond the course itself through a strong community
• Integrative – noticing a kinship between courses, learning modalities, experiences, and identities
• Adaptive – easily serves students with varying learning needs and is able to adjust when needed

These terms may be translated into online course design practices that enhance quality similar to the QM model and provide instructional designers and faculty-developers with the rationale to explore course design ideas that go beyond standard design practices, habit, or institution culture. In this spirit, UW Colleges Online instructional designers and faculty have begun rethinking past and current course designs, resulting in experimenting with design examples worth sharing. These include:

• Online discussion designed to build community and engage learners with the course materials – in particular, STEM courses
• Assessment systems that check for mastery and provide pointed feedback
• Course orientation materials that are consistent across all courses                                                          
• Course projects that involve multi-week and scaffolded activities
• Enhancing instructor presence through a variety of types of instructor-produced videos

Key to design decisions is figuring how to align practice with a larger vision, such as what Bass & Eynon espouse, in order to drive design conversations around a common vision for quality course design. In this sense, design concepts, such as the above list, go beyond online course design, helping shift design conversations where digital materials are used in any learning environment. This is where the work of Bass and Enyon (2016) can have deep implications for course design work.

Many of these initiatives and ideas have been developed and brainstormed over course development meetings and through several training events with faculty and through academic department conversation. It is in this spirit that the value of instructional designers as leaders and partners in course design and faculty professional development are highlighted. This hopefully reinforces the value of instructional design practice in cross-curricular initiatives. In other words, in defining quality, it takes a team of professionals to brainstorm and propose ideas, test them, and learn from mistakes. Frameworks like Bass and Enyon's are helpful in analysis, but should be noted, are just a part of a larger conversation in defining quality in course design.

This session will present a brief overview of UW Colleges Online and introduce aspects of the institution’s course design process. Additionally, as a way to introduce the framework presented above, the presentation will ask the participants for information on how they would define an impactful course as well as define the terms listed above (learner-centered, networked, integrative, and adaptive). Iterative examples of UW Colleges Online course activities will also be shared, demonstrating proof-of-concept, practice, and progression. Participants will be encouraged to ask questions on design choices.

Through the presentation, participants will begin to be able to:

• Evaluate online course design practices through a framework of learner-centeredness, networks, integration, and adaptation
• Recognize the value of an iterative process of course activity design
• Adapt course design ideas across disciplines
• Work with faculty in developing online courses within a reasonable scope
• Plan for digital course design ideas that may be utilized in all courses (not just online)

Bass, R. & Eynon, B. (2016). Open and Integrative: Designing Liberal Education for the New Digital Ecosystem. AAC&U.

Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2000). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education model. The Internet and Higher Education, 2(2-3), 87-105.

Mishra, P., & Koehler, M. J. (2006). Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge: A framework for teacher knowledge. Teachers College Record, 108(6), 1017-1054. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9620.2006.006

Reigeluth & Carr-Chellman (2009). Instructional-Design Theories and Models Volume III. Taylor and Francis: New York.