I’ve been a designer for almost 15 years and I can count on my hand the number of times I’ve had a course fully created before its first offering. If you’re a designer in higher ed, you’ve probably faced this reality many times. Over the past several years, there have been a series of events that have allowed me to rethink the value of our traditional learning design processes in higher ed. The conclusion is this. Typical learning design processes don’t work in higher ed.
In an odd twist, the factor that designers focus on the most, the content, actually becomes the enemy. By focusing on the content, we have created a scenario that results in failed projects, lessons that are poorly developed and hurriedly put online the night before students are supposed to access them. This has degraded the quality of the education that we’re providing to students. This is not a beneficial experience for anyone – faculty, designers, or students. We can and should do better.
I’ve developed a new strategy to address this and will be sharing the documentation. In the meantime, I’ve outlined several factors that I believe have contributed to the ineffectiveness of traditional learning design processes in higher education.
Mis-aligned priorities
One of the main challenges between faculty and learning designers is they have different priorities in the course design process. We all have the same goal of creating a great course, but there are many different ways in which this can happen. The primary point of contention, is that faculty have quite a bit of experience creating content, so they become focused on the visuals or the technology used in the course. They have the expectation that a learning designer’s role is to assemble the pieces and/or integrate the technology into the course. Faculty know they can write the content and trust their ability to work through that on their own time. While there are a number of tech-savvy faculty, designers mostly work with individuals who don’t understand the technology or the possibilities of technology-supported learning. Leading to the faculty wanting to have the technology figured out first.
On the flip side, designers are focused on getting the content so we can help support learning processes because we know the visual and technological elements should support learning processes. Not be the primary focus. Thus, we as designers try our best to get, blueprints, outlines, and content as soon as possible.
While this is not the only reason why the faculty and designer relationship erodes, it’s definitely a major factor.
Inflexible processes
I believe that course design is just as much of an art form as it is a science. Unfortunately, the procedures end up taking focus within course design processes. We as designers become so focused models, strategies, and following the rigid lockstep process of course design, we often forget the creativity that goes into designing.
These rigid models will almost guarantee that faculty will pull away from collaborating at some point. We place our models and measures at the forefront of the design process and I can see how faculty could feel like the teaching and learning takes the back seat to what is essentially a production process. And when faculty start to miss meetings we remind them of the strict production schedule we’re facing and how they should meet with us as soon as possible in order to develop the course before the opening date.
Where is creativity in this process?
Unbalanced Workload
The third point I’m going to discuss is the unbalanced workload. The design process in higher education places the majority of the work on faculty. They need to research and write the content. Ideally, this process would be more collaborative, but that’s not how things typically work. Faculty already have many other responsibilities then we essentially ask them to write a digital textbook.
Take that fact into consideration and then add in all of the rigid processes we make them follow. It’s honestly not surprising to understand why designers receive the content just before the course goes live.
BUT – Here’s the cool part!
I’ve designed a new strategy to change this dynamic. I’m currently implementing this strategy with a new faculty member and…It’s working!!!
During this entire fall semester, he hasn’t missed a single meeting.
At the end of our sessions, he’s elated because he feels like the time spent during our consultations is productive and allows him to focus on developing the content amid a chaotic schedule. The new semester starts in January and we have the entire course sketched out with much of the content already filled in, with the assessment strategies in place!
As I mentioned, I’m working on documenting this strategy and will share out the resulting information. Keep an eye out for a future post and downloadable items you can use to replicate this process!