Instructional designers’ role has been changing from creating learning for a target audience to facilitating and guiding faculty on how to design asynchronous learning for online program. This presentation will share an example of continuous improvement of faculty development program through changing the role of instructional designers in Higher Education.
As online programs and online courses become an integral part of higher education, the role of instructional designers helping university faculty has expanded (Allen & Seaman, 2015). In this presentation, we define instructional design as a systematic approach to enhance learning effectiveness through application of instructional principles. Following a paradigm shift to a student-centered teaching approach, instructional designers have started providing more support to faculty, who are facing new institutional pressures to develop online programs, on innovative online pedagogies in a technology-integrated learning environment. A common strategy to help university faculty design, develop, and implement online courses is working in collaboration with instructional designers. However, this type of collaboration usually requires tremendous amount of time and effort from faculty. It also creates additional anxiety or frustration over time management, even though at the end of this collaboration faculty are able to design and implement online courses. How can institutions respond to this challenge? What is the best approach to solve this issue?
This presentation will share a practical example of how one of the largest public institutions in Mid-Atlantic region of the USA with enrollment of more than 23,000 undergraduate students has been continuously improving faculty professional development to design, develop, and implement asynchronous online courses for undergraduate online programs. By changing the role of instructional designers, the institution has implemented a training program for university faculty to help them design, develop, and implement asynchronous online courses. While the traditional role of instructional designers is to create learning for a target audience, instructional designers in this training program play the role of facilitators to guide faculty to create innovative pedagogies for student-centered technology-enhanced learning environments.
The presenters will begin by sharing background information on their institution’s undergraduate student online learning program initiative. Previously, the institution has supported university faculty and departments on their efforts to develop online courses and online programs through providing grants. Although individual university faculty and departments have received help of instructional designer support for developing online courses and online programs, they mostly worked with instructional designers in one-on-one mode during the grant terms. Recently, the institution moved to a group training model called the “Online Course Development Institute.” More than 120 faculty members have finished OCDI successfully.
In 2017, the institution created a new professional development program for faculty in order to meet institutional needs towards implementation of online programs for undergraduate students. In this new program, faculty go through a cohort-based 15-week training offered through blended and online modes of delivery that provides them with foundational pedagogical knowledge for the paradigm shift from instructor-oriented to student-oriented environment. Through a situated-learning approach where faculty play the role of online student, this training demonstrates asynchronous learning techniques, such as, implementation of low-stake assessment, cooperative group activities, pre-structured online discussions with debate and role-based designs, and multimedia-based instructional feedback. In collaboration with training facilitator and faculty fellow, two instructional designers facilitate six-week asynchronous online part in this 15-week online training. They guide the cohort of faculty on the future course design and technology integration to find innovative ways to engage online students. In addition, the faculty also help and learn from one another by sharing their own teaching experiences, assignment designs, and providing comments on their peers’ work in the training.
In the next phase, faculty who finished the 15-week training continue course development with their assigned instructional designer. In order to monitor and track online course quality, faculty submit their courses to a mid-point review and a final readiness review. When faculty pilot the newly developed online course, they are offered opportunity to work with an online teaching coach. Presenters will share and discuss how this new professional training program has gone through several updates and revisions based on the cohorts’ outcomes and feedback. In addition, presenters will explain how the role of instructional designers has gone through modifications and changes based on the continuous training improvements. Presenters will demonstrate training program designs in fall 2017 up to spring 2019. Program designs between fall 2017 and spring 2018 included two-week blended training focusing on pedagogies to transition from face-to-face instruction to online teaching facilitated by a trainer; six-week asynchronous online training facilitated by an individual instructional designer or a group of instructional designers; and integration of one-on-one instructional design consultations after eight weeks of training. Finally, presenters will share the current designs in fall 2018 and spring 2019 where the major changes in training program structure have occurred. While previous training designs focused more on traditional role of instructional designers who help faculty design and develop an online course, the latest designs in fall 2018 and spring 2019 focus on facilitator role who models techniques for asynchronous online teaching and learning.
Assessment: Why is the current role of instructional designers effective? Since fall 2017, the training program design has changed three times: in spring 2018, fall 2018, and spring 2019. In fall 2017, the first cohort of 21 faculty from three online programs finished the program in spring 2019. Out of 21 enrolled to the program in 2017, 18 piloted online courses and online labs successfully in fall 2018. Instructional designers who worked with the fist cohort mostly provided traditional consultations with heavier weight on one-on-one meetings. Each individual faculty designed and developed the course during two semesters. There were several challenges that the first cohort faced such as redoing the initial course design and time commitment. For example, faculty said, “The timeframe was too long. I had to re-do much of my early work” and “I found it exceptionally difficult to commit the amount of time after-hours and weekends that was necessary to fully implement the plan as structured by the training program.”
In spring 2018, the second cohort of 25 faculty from four online programs has finished the course pilot and now at the post-pilot stage. Out of 25 enrolled to the program in spring 2018, 19 had piloted by spring 2019. Those mentioned challenges in the first cohort have changed the way that instructional designers provided help in the second cohort. Instead of focusing on individual online course design, instructional designers guided the second cohort through best practices in online teaching and learning in a community-based environment. The faculty who enrolled in the second cohort had an opportunity to learn from each other and find better solutions for their course design. Instructional designers provided comments suggesting possible innovative ways and the faculty decided which techniques could fit their courses. For example, one faculty said, “Interacting with peers, and reviewing their ideas and work has actually been the most helpful thing when it comes to teaching my own course. If I come up with an idea for them, I usually steal it for myself as well.”
In fall 2018, the third cohort of 21 faculty from six online programs will pilot the newly developed courses in fall 2019. They are at the pilot stage now. Instructional designers’ role in this cohort remained the same as in the second cohort. However, in addition to guiding faculty, instructional designers modelled online teaching techniques by situating faculty to what an online student usually experiences: following due dates, reading or viewing instructional feedback, and meeting the assessment rubric requirements to participate in peer review activities. For example, the majority of faculty borrowed new activities design for cooperative learning through wiki that instructional designers added to model the online group work. As this cohort has not finished the program yet, no data on the program effectiveness and their satisfaction is available.
The fourth cohort of 16 faculty from seven online programs has completed a 15-week training in spring, 2019. Instructional designers’ role remained the same with additional modification of training facilitation. The fourth cohort received more community-based experience where instructional designers not only modelled online teaching techniques but also provided feedback in open areas that all faculty can benefit from their suggestions.
Level of Participation: This presentation will start from engagement activity where participants will share their own experiences of their work with instructional designers. Presenters will create a shared Google doc file where participants can enter their answers. Participants will also identify one benefit and one challenge working with instructional designers on the design and development of asynchronous online courses. The list will serve as a guide during presentation with emphasis on both benefits and challenges when university faculty work with instructional designers. Participants can also share how their institutions approach faculty professional development and how instructional designers work with university faculty.
Session Goals: Session attendees will be able to envision how the role of instructional designers can change depending on the type of training. They will also be able to modify their existing professional trainings at their institutions to help faculty transition from face-to-face teaching to online teaching. Attendees from institutions that are moving towards development and implementation of fully online programs will find this presentation useful and recommendations on how to get started will be provided.