Course Design Studio. A level up in design and scalability

Concurrent Session 9

Brief Abstract

Through a faculty makerspace we are getting more accomplished and honing in on the collaboration between Learning Experience Designers and Faculty. Come listen, hopefully learn from our mistakes, and feel inspired by what we have done thus far to scale a small team into bigger operations with higher quality courses!

Presenters

Lead Presenter: Emilie Austin, National Louis University

Emilie Austin is a Learning Experience Designer who loves to hike, travel and drink tea. She also has two kids and one dog named pepperoni. Emilie can be insanely organized, which comes in handy as the secretary on the Converse Park Board(the park board in her hometown). She is passionate about Competency Based Education, believing that it provides students with the opportunity to master skills and knowledge at their own pace.

Additional Authors

Extended Abstract

The conversation around leveling up the collaboration between stakeholders and designers as well as faculty buy-in is something that will never leave the Learning Experience Design (LXD) field, really it will never leave any field that involves two people working together. Add the need for collaboration and buy in to the fact that a single member of a learning design team can only do so much work before they feel incredibly burnt out and we start to really identify the issues with learning design teams. While it is well known that there are many benefits to having a dedicated team checking your accessibility, inclusivity, Universal Design, tech issues, making suggestions on more engaging assessments, and more, what is the next step for design teams at Universities? Could it be flipping the LXD role on its head? 

 

By crafting a faculty-led makerspace with an LXD team member giving feedback from a consultative perspective we are able to publish additional higher quality courses with less friction between our LXDs and faculty teams. This allows the faculty to embrace their knowledge of teaching and course design or to get a more one on one experience if they want to get more support. By designing a space with LXDs as facilitators to course design we are able to allow more academic freedom and embrace innovation that faculty are interested in and know the students will benefit from within our LMS.

 

During this presentation we will talk about what we did that worked and what we discovered through the design thinking process that just didn’t work, come learn from our mistakes! This presentation will be structured like a mini version of our Course Design Studio. Come to the session and for X minutes we will engage you in how we guide faculty through the design process asking them to focus on specific areas of metacognition and the course design. Then see how we structure our LXD team to allow them the scalability to support more courses in development! Finally, walk away with your own outline for a course design studio and the ability to brainstorm with us on it!