Design Thinking Prototyping an Online Course Monika Seifert

Challenge

As instructional designer (ID), I was approached to support a professor at the university, where I  work, to advise him on how to put his negotiation course online. This initial challenge, of putting  materials online in a coherent and meaningful way, that was given to me evolved in the process  of information gathering that I underwent with this professor and his Teaching Assistants (TAs).  When he asked for support, he was looking for someone to help him develop video lectures to  replicate his in-class presentations. However, there were several obstacles to putting the course  online. Firstly, the professor received data in individual spreadsheets several times a week from  the students and needed to compiled them at the end of the week. Keeping track of the multiple  weekly activities and assignments contributed to confusion on the part of the students, as well.  Another obstacle was how to replicate the weekly interactions that built a strong student  community in the classroom with an online setting where students would interact in a relatively  isolating environment.

As an instructional designer, my focus has always been on creating a learner-focused  environment so the challenge was to take a complicated course structure and simplify it for  students as well as faculty.  Added to that challenge was the need to create an online structure  for a positive student experience to engage with the materials and activities as well as to  automate the students’ work in such a way that the TAs and professor need only to track it and  review it leaving a clear documentation trail and making grading easier.

Selection   (Terms in bold refer to the Learning Launch Design template as described by Douglas Wood in Week  4.)

I plan to discuss the Learning Launch Design Tool because I had the opportunity to develop a  prototype, 7-week course, and test it by offering it to a small group of 14 professionals (from  diverse backgrounds, all working full-time) with the same team — faculty, TA, and ID — who  would later implement the full 14-week version for full-time graduate students. Our key  assumption was that an online negotiation course could be successfully implemented by  developing an active student community, through relevant activities and course structure based  on user-centered design. As to who, we knew that working professionals often look for  training  in negotiation so the course would meet their ongoing needs. The how was implemented  through the existing communications and LMS systems. The costs to implement the learning  launch were minimal as it required staff time that was already allocated to the project and used  tools and processes that are part of the university system. The only real cost to anticipate would  be the program’s reputation (not a minor cost). We anticipated giving refunds if this were an  issue to maintain good relations. And the timeframe was short and completed a month prior to  the start of fall term, allowing us to make changes, where needed, to the prototype.

Application

A primary goal of the learning launch was to test the automation of assignments as well as the  structure of the course for ease of communication and engagement. Did the automation work  without being too complicated for the students? Were the students engaged? Did it free up time  for the professor and TA? A secondary goal was to evaluate the efﬁcacy of offering the course in  the online environment. Would the students not only remain engaged but would they achieve  the course outcomes and skill building? Did the structure of the course in the learning  management system (LMS) allow for clear communication and a positive user experience?

Design Thinking Prototyping an Online Course Monika Seifert

The course was structured and designed, applying user-experience effective practices. All  assignments were completed using online tools to aggregate responses in a spreadsheet. Pass/ fail quizzes were built into the LMS so that students could determine if they were absorbing the  material. Along with the automated grading system that was created, a survey was given to the  students at the end of the course to gauge their learning experience with questions focused on  their experience with the course structure, content, and assignments.

This was a surprisingly effective method for testing the course in the online environment. While  students did pay to take the course, we were using a curriculum that had been developed years  ago and improved upon in the subsequent years, so the quality was high. The professor is  highly regarded in his ﬁeld and enjoyed engaging with the students in web conferences. We  were focused on their engagement in the online environment and the use of new online tools,  but the students were focused on connecting with each other through the assignments and  absorbing the material.

Insight

Having been part of teams that had developed non-credit online courses for busy professionals,  I had warned the professor that he should be prepared for several to drop out of the course  sometime in the ﬁrst three weeks, even though I had recommended activities and materials that  would accommodate the schedule of someone working full-time. The results, however, were  astonishingly successful. Not one student dropped out, and all, but one student, completed all of  the activities required to receive a certiﬁcate of completion. I attribute this to the focus of using  the assignments to build community and having a weekly class meeting with the professor. The  professor and TA were thrilled with the automation of assignments and grading. They  determined to continue to use this model for the full 14-term course in the classroom.

That said, there were drawbacks which required correction to aspects of the course but even so  this new iteration will be a better and more effective course for the students as well as for the  faculty. What has been most effective, however, has been the experience of the faculty member  who has become a supporter of teaching online  through this experiment and now sees an  opportunity to meet the needs of non-traditional graduate students while maintaining the high- quality education expected at the university. One of the students also requested that he offer the  7-week course to her colleagues, so there are other potential markets for this course and others  that build on it.

Approach

In ID work, prototyping and testing courses is meant to be part of the process. However, it is  seldom implemented, in my experience, except on a very small scale, in large part due to tight  deadlines for launching a course. For this reason, there has been little innovation in the  structure of online courses. This opportunity for a learning launch was serendipitous and one for  which I had total control as the professor trusted my experience and insights as to what would  work for his students. The work that we did here can help promote differentiated courses that  meet the needs of both faculty and students and create a student-centered experience. I hope  to be able to continue to implement learning launches as the online learning environment grows.

