Driving Development Through Partnership: A High-Touch Faculty-Focused Course Design Model

While higher education institutions continuously look to embrace innovations in online learning to set themselves apart from their peers and meet student demand, implementing the necessary changes culturally and financially can prove to be insurmountable. Some faculty may be skeptical about the efficacy of online learning while others who are open to change may not be provided with the necessary time, training, and resources to develop effective and engaging online courses. Moreover, the hesitation some instructors have towards online learning is often mirrored in their work with instructional design teams. Faculty members may fear that their autonomy will be subject to the imposition of standards and methods that undermine their expertise and authority in the classroom.

These issues have led institutions to question how they can best support and empower faculty to become comfortable and confident investing their time and expertise in quality online course development. At Helix Education, we believe that a thoughtful and supportive instructional design method may help instructors to approach the online course creation process with more ease and security. We do this by consciously putting the faculty member at the heart of the course creation process but also by excusing them from the more onerous tasks like outcomes mapping. We have developed a facilitation strategy and set of tools around instructional design collaborations intentionally designed to empower and support faculty members throughout the course design process. We also recognize that these efforts require wider organizational support and a clear structure that will help keep course development efforts moving forward. If faculty feel secure and supported, and know that their expertise is essential to the course design process, it will greatly improve institutional ability to drive innovation and change. In this presentation, we will provide concrete strategies for creating a positive environment for developing quality, scalable, customizable online courses that places the vision and position of the faculty member at the front of the process.

Thomas More College provides a perfect case study of this process realized. Thomas More College (TMC) serves just over 1,600 students. Although primarily from Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, students from about 20 states and several countries attend TMC. Since its inception in 1921 TMC has had to constantly adapt to best serve its stakeholders and constituents. As many liberal arts institutions have discovered over the last 10 years, TMC has found that their audience’s needs and wants are rapidly changing.  Inspired by the Catholic Intellectual Tradition, TMC wished to continue their mission in challenging students of all faiths to examine the ultimate meaning of life, their place in the world, and their responsibility to others in a new online modality.

TMC encountered many hardships shared by any institution getting started in the online world. Challenges impeding growth included a lack of funding, minimal institutional knowledge, and an institutional culture that feared change. As the institution embarked on the journey to add online courses and programs they were also faced with a limited learning management system that restricted engagement with students. This caused many full-time faculty members to shy away from developing and implementing their own online courses because they did not want to give up the relational engagement that they knew was a part of the mission/values of TMC. For this reason, many of the courses initially offered in the online format were taught by a limited group adjunct faculty. This did not allow the online modality to gain traction at the institutional level and eventually led to a stagnation of offerings. At this point, TMC looked to Helix Education for the resources and support that would improve the student experience and the increase the viability of online offerings.

In this session members of the Helix Education and Thomas More College team will briefly outline how Helix Education's collaborative course design process is being deployed at TMC to reinvigorate strategic online course development and ensure course quality. We will share our approaches to drawing out faculty expertise and passion so that it can be effectively integrated into high quality, personalized, and scalable online courses. We will also share how we supported this initiative by implementing a thorough, highly collaborative process of working with faculty at TMC to create effective and innovative online courses and program offerings. Concurrent with implementing these changes to the course design process, TMC also moved to a newer, better-supported LMS, which opened up possibilities for stronger engagement and collaboration amongst students and faculty. The team has leveraged these concurrent change processes in strategic ways that balance immediate action with long-term vision. By positioning faculty at the center of the course design experience we believe our team has created an environment conducive to broader innovation and change. We will share the results of our efforts, including data and responses from students, faculty, and other key stakeholders.  We will also discuss future directions for our approach based on these results.

In our interactive presentation, we will describe the theoretical and practical underpinnings of our approach and demonstrate the ways in which we facilitate a structured faculty-driven instructional design process. We will discuss the use of flexible course design templates, the impact of faculty personalization, and approaches to building a collaborative environment that will still produce quality results. In addition to sharing the results of the new processes, we will offer insights and lessons learned for those who are interested in implementing a similar approach at their institution. Throughout the presentation, there will be opportunities for participants to discuss current challenges or approaches to online course design and development with their colleagues, both in small and larger group settings.