How does an organization with 4 distinct brands and 71 locations align on a single set of program offerings, schedules, and course design approaches? In January 2017 Education Corporation of America’s design team, developed the means to convert 163 courses and develop 9 new programs in under 9 months.
Education Corporation of America (ECA) operates 71 career focused colleges around the country, offering diploma and associate level, direct to employment programs. In 2015 ECA purchased 38 campuses from Kaplan Higher Education and rebranded these as Brightwood College. With this acquisition, we faced a unique challenge. Brightwood operated most of their diploma programs under a “course-a-month” model while their associates ran on a quarter system. Our Virginia College schools used only a quarter system. Additionally, we had overlap in the specific programs offered. For example, both institutions had Medical Billing and Coding programs. As we started centrally managing these programs, we had to align on a single program offering and determine a schedule that would work across all brands. Student performance data showed better persistence and completion rates in the course-a-month model and ECA decided to move all courses and programs towards that model.
As we approached January 2017 we took on the task of converting 113 existing courses offered on the quarter system and redeveloping these for a course-a-month model. Additionally, we completely redesigned our IT programs (2), Golf Academy program (1), and our EcoTech programs (4) resulting in another 50 new courses. With a “go live” date of September 13, 2017 it was immediately obvious that this volume of work was going to be too large for a team of five Instructional Designers and four Production personnel. Couple this with styles and standards being predominantly part of institutional memory, maturing development workflows, and a constant moving target of courses and programs needing development, our challenges were numerous.
Staffing was the first challenge we approached. Using an estimated workload, based on a one-day design pilot we determined a 2:1 designer to production ratio was appropriate. In total, we sought to hire seven additional instructional designers and four production personnel. We also sought two support desk roles. With limited time on our side (October 2016 with a January project launch), we first looked at an augmented staffing model using contract agencies. While it could support the need, the costs associated with external staffing agencies was prohibitive. We then looked at hiring directly as contract to potentially permanent positions. While we had good lead flow of candidates, those with much experience and who could quickly ramp up were a challenge within our given budgets. We ended up hiring candidates from outside the traditional instructional designer realm and taking a risk on several candidates with minimal experience by seeing potential in their wanting to learn and grow with the position. As we approached launch of the project, we did get lucky in that we were able to re-forecast workloads beyond this project launch and quantify hiring everyone directly.
Since we had a large volume of new hires to onboard it became crucial to use experienced team members where they could impact the most. Our Director of Instructional Design became the project manager and quality assurance lead. She worked with the existing team and they became leaders for individual program areas as well as secondary quality assurance reviewers. The existing team provided valuable feedback to standards and process as needed throughout the project. We onboarded the new hires as the project went live through series of team meetings, group projects, and by assigning them courses with an existing structure from which to work.
Despite best efforts, hiring was not as smooth or quick as we liked. We had a new hire leave shortly after starting and several positions were frozen before we could make final offers. Since the number of courses to be built were still too numerous for the expanded team, we looked at outsourcing solutions. We hired two separate agencies to work with us. One we had experience with and knew our approach. They helped develop a fully online version of an existing program for us. The other was a new vendor for ECA and we used them to create four new programs under our EcoTech brand. This created another set of challenges. Our styles and process had to be communicated and adhered to by contractors. Updated standards were not always communicated well. This lead to confusion and courses that were close but missed the mark. In some cases, resources selected by the contractors were not always appropriate and required post-delivery updating. We dedicated one designer to solely manage the new vendor. They ensured work kept flowing and that standards and deadlines were met.
While approaching the course-a-month model, we also wanted had the goal of “one course to rule them all”. Regardless of delivery model; blended, online, or augmented, the course shell would be the same. All course content in Canvas would be narrative based, time agnostic, and textbook agnostic allowing for maximum flexibility in delivery with limited content dependency. This created a challenge in how instructors and students would use the shell and how our content would reflect best practice.
Brightwood courses had been using Canvas since February 2015. There was a basic shell content requirement, but the course layout and content was sparse and navigation inefficient. Virginia College Online (VCO) was also experienced in Canvas. The Instructional Design team began document standard design approaches in July 2015 with a review of the design standards from the VCO instructional design team during a team meeting with the Brightwood instructional design team. This consolidation of processes and documentation became the stepping stone we started from when creating the next evolution of course design and standards with this project.
Before standardization began, experienced instructional designers piloted a standard design process for creating course content to meet a standard level of design. The goal was to determine if a set amount of time and process would efficiently meet the aggressive schedule deadlines. From this pilot, an initial style of course content and a process was created for the future larger team to follow.
As we began to deliver the first set of new courses we implemented our first structured, formal QA process. All courses were reviewed upon completion by the Director. Once approved, the course was submitted to production to build. When the course was built, a second, new instructional designer reviewed the course before being completed. Draft checklists were used to guide review of the courses. This resulted in live courses with only minor corrections to update.
The project officially started in January 2017. Standards evolved as we went and were modified as we built and determined a need or change was required. This created some inconsistencies in the course content. We tried to make changes only on a go forward basis, but standards impacting, for example gradebook, were retro-activated back to finalized courses.
As the project progressed we had course and programs added or removed from the project. These changes were driven by shifts in individual campus needs, moves to a new national accreditor, and updates to financial aid and admissions policies. This resulted in a moving target for course development.
Coupled with a new team, evolving processes, and multiple vendors, tracking of all the courses required a different approach. Smartsheet was used to track each course development from analysis to launch. The VP and Director of Instructional Design maintained the project schedule and updated when a milestone was achieved. Tracking also required creating a basic list of targeted courses by the week to prioritize production efforts and ensure that deadlines were met.
These central tracking tools then fed a project dashboard. Executive teams received weekly updates and reports on the progress of the project. These showed progress, expected progress, and the changing deliverables. This visual allowed leadership to quickly assess the status at a glance and eliminated the need for regular lengthy status reports.
The newly aligned courses launched in September 2017. Overall, the new courses were successfully completed the first term. Initial feedback from the Virginia College instructors has been favorable. Having consistent documentation support by a course shell eased the transition to the new scheduling and programs. At this time, we do not have data to support the proposed benefits (retention, performance, and completion) of the schedule change; however, by April 2018, we will have gathered several months of data to present.
In reflection, we learned much through this project. We could not have met the volume of work without at least starting points for standard course design workflows and style guides. These continue to evolve today. When working with new hires and external development partners the need for clearly defined scope documents and QA guidelines were essential. A more thorough QA checklist was created as an output of the project.
The largest benefit has been the evolution of the team itself. Select members of the team have stepped up into more leadership roles. By being focused on a large task we were able to bond as a team. This now supports the future evolution of ECA courses as we seek to expand and develop the next best in class approaches for our students and faculty.