Instructional Design

What is an Instructional Designer (ID)?

Instructional Designers (IDs) are responsible for helping programs and instructors to present their educational materials in engaging and approachable ways while simultaneously reducing barriers to interacting with those materials. Instructional designers do not provide the learning content, but work with faculty to adapt or organize content to meet a wide range of student learning needs and preferences. Our IDs use the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework which operates from the premise that all students learn in unique ways. The IDs have expertise in education, instructional design, and/or learning theory.

How can Instructional Designers (IDs) support faculty?

IDs play a vital role in supporting faculty to design engaging, dynamic, and accessible courses - especially in online and blended courses. Here's how we can collaborate:

Collaborate on Course Planning: Help faculty articulate course goals, student learning outcomes, and logical course structure
Backward Design: Guide faculty to design courses with Universal Design Principles (UDL) in mind to weave the desired learning outcomes through the content, activities, and resources.
Create Learning Modules: Assist in developing weekly modules (lessons) with clear objectives, activities and assessments.
Provide Pedagogical Guidance by sharing active learning strategies (case studies, problem-based learning, flipped classroom), inclusive teaching strategies (methods to foster equity, diversity and inclusion in teaching practices and content), and feedback strategies (recommend ways to give meaningful and timely feedback that supports student learning.
Quality Assurance - Internal Reviews of courses (using QM rubrics) and identifying digital accessibility needs and challenges.

For help with course development, email your Instructional Designer!

Rose Johnson
ajohnson18@antioch.edu
Education
Leadership & Change
Environmental Studies

Kristi Krintzline, Ph.D
kkrintzline@antioch.edu Counseling, Psychology & Therapy

Ashleigh Wink, MAT, MFA
awink@antioch.edu
Undergraduate Studies
Grad Management
Counseling, Psychology & Therapy

How does the Instructional Design Process work?

Faculty's Role

As the faculty member, you are the content expert and the person responsible for setting the tone and goals for learning in the course.

Your responsibilities in a successful instructional design process:

Think about your preferred teaching methods or activities (student-created learning objects, group work, pre-reading or discovery of concepts through discussion, etc...).
Have the overview and learning objectives ready or at least outlined before meeting with an instructional designer
Curate all content for the course, including selecting reading materials, media, and creating the syllabus.
Making choices about collaboration methods, assignment collection, and the expectations for any course-based interactions.
Building the course based on the design developed in collaboration with the instructional designer (depending on your program's requirements).

The Instructional Designer's Role

The instructional designer is an expert in learning theory and practices. At Antioch, the specialty of the instructional designers is technology-supported learning, though we can also help to improve face-to-face interaction as well if you have questions about classroom-based interactions. We can help you adapt your content and the learning environment to help your students effectively and meet their learning objectives.

The instructional designer's responsibilities in a successful instructional design process:

Understanding and taking into account the teaching style of the instructor and any known student learning preferences and/or accessibility needs
Using best practices to adapt existing and/or suggest new instructional strategies, learning activities, and changes to the online course environment to support student learning, engagement, and alignment of learning objectives, assessments, and activities
Offering suggestions to improve instructional problem areas identified by the instructor or students in previous iterations of the course.
Providing resources, guidance, and training for making the agreed-upon changes to the course site and/or materials.

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