How Many Wildcats Does It Take to Make a Great Online Class?

Teaching is often an isolating and siloed experience, but I’m here to tell you course design is better when it’s a team activity. This summer I transitioned from full-time sociology faculty at a community college to working as an instructional designer for Physics and Medicine on the UA Digital Learning team. I was assigned to help Eduardo Rozo build a PHYS 141 (Introductory Physics) online class and to help Charles Wolgemuth build the accompanying online lab. Due to time constraints, we were building the class as it was being taught by Alex Burant with the help of a graduate assistant. This was an intensive experience for everyone, made more difficult by the time crunch, but in the end, I am extremely proud of the engaging, student-centered class we created.

Collaboration, in my experience, leads to more innovation, more creativity, and a better overall class, although admittedly, it makes the process more complex. As an instructional designer who knows about best practices and good design, I was able to suggest ways to make the class more learner-friendly. I was also able to connect the instructors with our amazing video team (Jacobo Ramírez, Steve Bayless, and Luis Carrión) who helped them problem-solve and create professional video lectures. As a complete novice to the field, when reviewing the videos, I was able to point out where things were confusing. However, I missed some of the more complex mathematical errors.  This is where the graduate assistant was invaluable – with her detail-oriented review of each lecture she caught all the math/physics mistakes and as a student was able to point out things that students might find confusing.  As Charles shared with me, “Getting input from multiple people helps broaden the course content and the presentation such that it doesn’t just follow one person’s vision.  In that way, it makes it more accessible to a wider audience.”

While fun and rewarding, this course build was not without challenges.  Time was the largest hurdle to overcome. Eduardo was making an average of 14 interactive videos each WEEK that had to be recorded, edited, reviewed (and fixed if necessary), close captioned, and turned into PlayPosits.  It was a learning process to find a workflow that worked for everyone as each of us had several competing priorities.  With such a short timeline, the creators were not able to go back and make things better.  Charles stated, “the most challenging aspect was the timeline and my inexperience with having done an online laboratory course before.  Through the course of the semester, I definitely found things that I should have done differently.” As the instructional designer who was coordinating everyone, I learned that clear communication, checking in for issues, and creating a process were vital to a successful build.

Why work with an instructional designer?  Wouldn’t it be possible for instructors to create a quality online course working in the department instead?  Eduardo stated that the interactive aspect of the course would not be possible without the help of an instructional designer.  Charles listed “two major benefits.  First, the website for the course is significantly more professional that what I would have had the time or ability to put together on my own.  Second, I really appreciated that Celeste carefully read through the material that I was developing and provided extremely valuable edits and suggestions.”  Faculty are the subject matter experts, and they are the ones that find creative ways to help students learn.  Instructional designers, however, are experts in online learning and can connect you to the best tools and best practices for your courses.  Instructional designers also can connect you with video and audio services in our Digital Learning team and help keep you on track with your course build.  Charles advises other faculty to “definitely work with an instructional designer.”

What can you take away from this blog?  Collaboration can lead to a wonderful and enriching course build experience.  Instructional designers are central to that process in terms of facilitation and managing the build.  Clear communication and creating a workflow that works for everyone involved is vital and make take several attempts.  Most importantly, Eduardo warns, “start early!  It takes way longer than you think it will take.”