Digital Learning Production Team 

The Digital Learning Production team helps faculty members design courses that contain research-based learning practices, are inclusive and accessible, and are student-focused. 

An instructional designer will do a lot of the work to help a faculty member make conscientious decisions and help build the courses to meet our student-ready expectations, but they can’t do it without the knowledge and expertise provided by the faculty member. Below is a guide to the effort, workload, and timeline faculty members can expect in regard to the course development process.

Factors That Affect the Effort and Workload During Course Development

• New Course vs. Existing Course

• Course Length: 16 week vs. 8 week

• Age, Accessibility, and Alignment of current course materials

Every Course is Different

Courses vary in their completeness and student-readiness, the examples below briefly describe some potential examples based on a course entering the development process. 

New Course

• Description: This course is either a new offering or has never been taught online/in this modality before. 

• Expectation: This type of course has some pros and cons, it has further to go to be a complete course since there is no content or elements in the course. On the other hand it is a blank slate for the ID and Faculty members can design excellent learning experiences without having to make existing content fit.

• Effort: With any new course the largest challenge is curating new content, objectives, and effective assignments. As the Subject Matter Expert, faculty must put a considerable effort into outlining the content and finding aligned resources early on. The ID can help with identifying learning activities, application activities, and media opportunities only after they know the type of content and expected outputs.

Timeline: With a new course you can expect to spend the first 2 weeks meeting your instructional designer and learning about the process. Weeks 3-11 will be spent identifying the learning content, selecting activities, and defining the assignment details. The final weeks of course development will be where the ID builds the course and makes sure everything meets our standards. During these final weeks, they will show the faculty member some of the progress and elements in the course for approval. 

Existing Course

• Description: This course has been offered online previously (Even if the faculty member hasn’t taught it before). 

• Expectation: This type of course is generally easier to get started on because there is established content for the ID and faculty member to use as a springboard. This is not always the case though, having material does not always mean that the material is aligned, accessible, or up to date - three things that are required for a Quality Matters certified course. Having materials also means some decisions are governed by what is already in place.

• Effort: With an existing course, the ID can review the materials at the beginning and with the faculty member’s help, as a team, they can identify areas that could be improved for student experience and learning. The most challenging component for many faculty members is discussing and conveying how elements of the current version of the course 

Timeline: With a new course you can expect to spend the first 2 weeks meeting your instructional designer and learning about the process. Weeks 3-11 will be spent identifying the learning content, selecting activities, and defining the assignment details. The final weeks of course development will be where the ID builds the course and makes sure everything meets our standards. During these final weeks, they will show the faculty member some of the progress and elements in the course for approval. 

Detailed Overview of the Development Process