Instructional design is not a one-man show

Audience Level: 
All
Institutional Level: 
Higher Ed
Abstract: 

Instructional design is a collaboration of strengths to innovate online education.  All too often we ask instructional designers to be a jack of all trades: multimedia developer, instructional technologist, editor, instructional designer.  Instead of looking at instructional design as an individual event, let’s look at it as a team event.

Extended Abstract: 

Goals: Present an innovative approach to course design.  Discuss best practices for efficiently creating online curriculum, collaborative course design, and maximizing strengths to elevate course design. 

Employers like Amazon and Pearson want instructional designers who are skilled multimedia specialists, editors, and learning management system course administrators.  We get, it’s cheaper to hire one person to do all these things but is it better?  Does it deliver engaging instructionally sound courses?  You may have heard the phrase "Fast, cheap, or good. Pick 2." You can develop something fast and good, but it will cost more money to do.  You can develop something good and cheap, but it will take a long time. You can develop something fast and cheap, but will it be good? 

When you have 1 person creating all aspects of the course you can’t have it all—the quality of the course suffers.   

At Synergis Education we like to maximize the skills of our team, utilizing specialists in each of the roles of online course design. We approach course design like someone might approach building a house. You do not expect an electrician to build the wall, lay the flooring, and paint. Each role has a purpose to complete the house and it takes a team of people to construct a house. In this presentation we will discuss how we have built a respect and trust network that allows specialists in different roles to work together efficiently and concurrently to create relevant, engaging, and high quality courses. 

Session Type: 
Education Session