CoDesign Partnerships, Methods, Toolkits for Blended-Adaptive Learning Environments

Online learning is a team sport - Now more than ever, a key element to success in online learning design and innovation is collaboration. Successful online learning involves partnerships from diverse talent and perspectives. Often the success of online learning projects is highly dependent on how well people collaborate together on projects and initiatives. This session explores strategies for facilitating and optimizing collaboration for blended-adaptive learning curriculum and course design projects. A university example exploring a Math and Statistics Pathways project will be explored as a case study for collaborative curriculum design projects.

During this session, participants will:

• Examine the role of collaboration and partnerships in blended-adaptive learning design and innovation.
• Explore common scenarios and barriers for blended-adaptive learning curriculum and instructional design collaboration.
• Apply principles and methods of co-design to blended-adaptive learning design situations.
• Discover toolkits for facilitating collaborative curriculum and course design projects

This session will use a variety of strategies to interact with and engage participants. These strategies include worked examples, case studies, demonstrations, and micro-presentations. Participants will engage in active learning experiences by applying the concepts explored during this session to their specific contexts. Participants will also gain access to a toolkit of resources they can use to put the ideas discussed to work right away.

The case study examined during this session is a university Math and Statistics Pathways project. Successful completion of Math and Statistics gateway courses are essential to undergraduate students’ progress towards graduation. Common challenges in Math and Statistics gateway courses include the lack of alignment of math and statistics courses to the needs of social science majors; the narrow focus on procedures and notations than practical application and examples; and the lack of personalization or remediation of lessons. This has led to trends in high failure rates.

Key goals for this project were to redesign a two-course pathway in Statistics for Social Science majors (non-Math majors), integrate application projects and examples contextualized to social science, blend active learning for classroom engagement with adaptive learning for personalization and online remediation, and reduce costs using Open Educational Resources.

The key to success in situations like Math and Statistics Pathway initiatives is involving a broad set of collaborators and stakeholders. A collaborative design process was used to ensure diverse ideas and perspectives are incorporated into a unified design plan while also earning buy-in in the solution.

A key approach explored in this session and was used during the Pathways project was “co-design”, a collaborative approach to designing solutions. Co-design refers to the collective creativity of designers and non-designers working together to address a specific design problem. A cornerstone of co-design partnerships is to involve diverse groups of stakeholders from different fields early as productive contributors to the course design process.  

The Learning Environment Modeling™ (LEM) toolkit was utilized as a common design system for helping collaborators work together to create solutions. This approach involves the use of a visual language and design canvas documents in both printed and digital forms to encourage shared thinking. Collaborators are encouraged to contribute diverse ideas and these are positioned within the collaboration framework and refined with input and collaborative feedback. Design toolkits in collaborative projects are important to give both designers and non-designers concrete means to participate in the design process.

The Math and Statistics Pathway project included a 3-day in-person strategy and design workshop, bringing together 37 participants (internal and external stakeholders) comprising faculty members from Math and Social Science departments, instructional designers, librarians, academic administrators, adaptive learning vendor representatives, and design workshop facilitators. All participants engaged in codesigning methods of (1) idea generation, (2) course visioning, (3) learner persona mapping, and (4) designing course blueprints using LEM. Following the workshop, a design portfolio was developed that captured design artifacts and recommendations.

We conclude with lessons learned from the project and implications for similar collaborative projects at scale. Learning designers have a key role in facilitating co-design teams because they provide course design knowledge and experience that the other stakeholders may not have. Designers often serve a perspective similar to a broadway show producer that can see and arrange diverse elements within a cohesive experience. In this perspective, designers keep track of existing, new and emerging technologies, wide array of pedagogical techniques -- relevant throughout the design process. The onus is on designers to explore the potential of generative toolkits and to bring the languages of co-designing and facilitation into their practice. 

The power of productive collaboration can engage diverse partners throughout curriculum and instructional design processes. Many online learning leaders and designers encounter frustrations and challenges with engaging institutional collaborators towards common online learning course and program goals. This session offers leaders and designers strategies for supporting successful curriculum and instructional design collaborations.