The landscape of higher education has undergone a dramatic transformation, permanently altering how we approach teaching and learning. At the heart of this evolution are instructional designers, whose role has become increasingly crucial in shaping effective digital learning experiences. This TxDLA webinar shares the importance of instructional design and how to navigate these changes.
In this insightful TxDLA webinar, expert presenters Dr. Jan Brott (Texas A&M International University) and Dr. Holley Collier (Trinity Valley Community College) explore the fundamental shifts in instructional design and their impact on higher education. The discussion delves into how instructional designers are adapting their approaches to meet new challenges while maintaining the core mission of enhancing student learning outcomes.
Key insights from the webinar include:
- The changing dynamics of workplace flexibility and remote collaboration
- Evolution of core responsibilities and essential skill sets
- Strategies for maintaining work-life balance in a digital-first environment
- Methods for aligning instructional design with institutional goals
- Practical approaches to supporting faculty and students in hybrid learning environments
Whether you’re an instructional designer, educational administrator, or faculty member interested in the future of digital learning, this webinar offers valuable insights into the changing landscape of educational technology and course design.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Jan Brott: Well, good afternoon, everyone. I’m Jan Brott and in this photo is my cat, Caesar. He helps me work. Well, not really, but he’s good company. He’s actually playing right here next to me. I just hope he doesn’t photo bomb during this.
He probably won’t. Anyway, I work remotely as an instructional designer and consultant, and I specialize in using social media for learning and OERs for course development. I do have over 20 years experience in education, five grandchildren, two children and three cats, and I have to say one amazing life. The past couple of years have been difficult for everyone, and so many of us have suffered the loss of loved ones. I understand. What I’ve learned through this is life is short, live in the moment, and have some fun. Holly?
Dr. Holly Collier: Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining. It’s a truly an honor to get to speak with you today and present with Jan. You’ll see in the picture, I’m a mom of two kids, Stella, Jane, and Roy, and my husband.
So a family of four, but we do have three dogs and two cats that keep us busy. I am currently at Trinity Valley Community College in Athens, Texas, the Associate Vice President for Instructional Innovation and Support. When I originally came to TVCC, I was the Director of Distance Learning, which included the Learning Management System Administration, Instructional Design, Tech Support, Professional Development, kind of all in one. And before that, I was a full-time Instructional Designer. I worked with Instructional Technologists, Media Development Team, Professional Development and Classroom Technology. So there’s a range there, which I know a lot of you put in your surveys as well. Today, I get to work with Student Retention, Distance Learning, the Library, Academic Support, Professional Development, but we’re still missing our vacant Instructional Designer, which you’ll hear about in a little while.
Lastly, I’ve survived one pandemic, which I think we all have if you’re here. But when I wrote that and I went back and read it, I thought, man, that comes off maybe a little insensitive. And that was not the intention at all. I think we need to definitely reflect and honor those that have felt lost and experienced lost. But we also have to embrace what we’ve done, and we have to celebrate after we’ve reflected and embraced that. And so that leads us to our first breakout session. In the idea of celebrating what we’ve all overcome since 2020, the long time we’ve been here, we’re refreshing to get to see people and give people a hug that we haven’t seen in the years. But most importantly, get to hear that they’re feeling the same way that we’ve been feeling. So we want to give you a moment here in a breakout room to hopefully have that same experience and celebrate each other. Here, someone else’s emotion and get to know that you haven’t been alone and you’re not alone. But most importantly, celebrate with each other what you’ve accomplished since 2020.
So look for your breakout room. And we’ll give you about a minute and a half to say hello and again, celebrate each other and say hello. Here we go. All rooms are open.
Lisa, I’m moving people around rooms. Yeah, I did too. I thought that there were a few about themselves. Yes. Okay.
There are 20 seconds. So all right. So welcome back, everyone.
Hopefully you enjoyed that quick speed dating. So continuing on, we’re going to take a moment and Jane and I are going to reflect on some personal experiences to lay a foundation for the rest of the conversation that’s going to lead us into how do we sustain in the coming months and years. So, Jane, I’m going to let you take that away. You’re muted.
Dr. Jan Brott: Okay. I figured out how to find the mute button. Okay. Well, first I wanted to share some of the survey. We sent a survey out. We had 17 respondents and I just wanted to give a little overview of some of those responses. We had approximately 74% work in higher ed, 24K12, 6% military and 6% other. For the question, what is your primary job functions, 41% are IDs followed by 35 other enlisted faculty developer, distance learning specialist, e-learning developer and instructional designer, which shows we may have different titles, but we often perform similar functions, including faculty development, supporting faculty with course design and LMS support, course review, developing and delivering training. So it’s no wonder we are all experiencing burnout. Molly?
Dr. Holly Collier: Yeah. So, you know, when you do so many different things in one role and I’ve been, I mean, I still feel like I’m doing that when you have to be the instructional designer, plus the LMS administrator, plus figure out all the professional development for either all the faculty or potentially all the college.
It’s a lot. Jane made it when we were talking and planning. She made a comment about it’s a dance and I just connected to that so much because, one, I love to dance and she couldn’t have been more right.
So, in thinking about dancing when Corey and I will go out dancing, he leaves and he lets me know, you know, hey, we’re about to fall off the dance floor, hey, you’re going to run into another couple or something. And that’s exactly what you do in your role, whether it’s just as an instructional designer working one-on-one faculty or a group of faculty or if you’re, you know, in another capacity with professional development or the learning management system, but you’re letting faculty know here’s where a student could struggle, here’s where they could fall off in the course. And here’s an idea or multiple ideas to get them back in the course and make sure they don’t get lost or not successfully complete. You give them these ideas about have you thought about doing it this way?
Have you, you know, this is your learning objective, maybe we need to get back to the learning objectives. And those when you can really see those working relationships that work so good together, it’s like two people dancing that you’re like, man, they really know how to dance because it’s a beautiful process, but it takes a lot to lead. And as an instructional designer, you have been leading so many people since 2020, because the masses just came due to COVID.
And so it’s taken a lot out of you, it’s taken a lot out of all of us. But the dance can be beautiful. So, and Jan has an approach there as well, in reference to the dance.
Dr. Jan Brott: Yeah, it is like a dance and designers are the change makers. You know, we need to be in step with the people we are serving. For example, with me, I am a very task oriented person, I have a very task oriented work style. And but not everybody’s that way. So I have had to take a step back and realize the dance for me is understanding that some other people have different approaches.
So I need to be aware of that, and adjust my dance to a variety of work styles. So now let’s talk a little bit about work location. In the survey, almost 59% of instructional designers work on campus or their organization’s location. About 35% work remotely and 29% work in a hybrid situation, both on site and remotely. I think most K-12 and higher ed both have been leaning more toward going back to campus, especially after a system being forced to work remotely during the pandemic. But many IDs want to continue to work remotely, which has posed some challenges for those who want to hire instructional designers for onsite positions.
Dr. Holly Collier: Holly? Yeah, so that’s a huge struggle for me personally right now, here at TVCC, because we’ve had a position, we’ve never had a full time instructional designer at TVCC. But since the position’s been posted, we cannot get an instructional designer hired because everybody wants to work remotely or by contract. So that can cause burnout, for sure. And then we have another theme here about our health and how health can cause burnout. I think Jane and I both have experiences here with this over the last couple of years, as all of you do as well. But thinking about this, I wrote the COVID-15, and in relation to the freshman 15 or whatever you want to think of it as.
But for me, it wasn’t during COVID that I got the COVID-15. It’s now after it’s coming back to work or coming back to the office. We’ve been working, it’s coming back to the office. Because when I was working from home and in that instructional design role and more, I was still at home and had time to go on walks. I had time to, well, I had the kids there too, so I had to get up and go outside and play and throw the baseball while I’m on the Zoom meeting.
And so, you know, it was that activity. And now being back in the office, I’m just sitting here, you know, just working, working, working, because it’s overload, right? And so, I think probably some of you have that same issue, maybe not exactly the same, but the health is causing burnout. So, how do we, thinking about those three things, and there are things that we learned coming out of COVID. So, how do we retain what we know worked as we continue to move forward and not lose the positive things?
Dr. Jan Brott: Okay, let’s consider this quote. It is important to acknowledge that there is a difference between well-planned and developed online courses or distance education programs, and the eclectic methods cobbled together hurriedly to meet the urgent demands of the situation. Nevertheless, the lessons learned from the experience should not be discarded. Can I get an amen to that?
Hallelujah, yes. That is so true. And when I was reading the survey responses, this one kind of stood out to me. The challenge has been I’m spread too thin helping with the technologies, making it difficult to support well-designed online and virtual experiences.
Again, I think that’s something that all of us can relate to. One of the things that helps with this is to have a development plan that measures learning and the quality of an online class. And there are several programs of this type. Some people do it in-house, or some people, you are most familiar with quality matters, which provides a rubric for designing and developing online courses. This really, whatever program you choose, this really helps provide a structure for faculty, understand how to create measurable learning objectives that align with their activities and assessments.
Dr. Holly Collier: So we know we have to, we have to keep going. We have to go back and kind of fix what was just hurriedly put along to help with COVID. But reflecting on our pre-COVID experiences and what we know and what we did, and during COVID, we get this grasp of how we can sustain moving forward using all of that knowledge and wisdom that we’ve learned throughout the years. In a sense, to sustain and overcome the burnout, we have to do what we ask faculty to do. And that is we have to come back to the table, we have to reassess, and we have to realign what we’re doing. We need to ask ourselves about the value of instructional design, what our philosophy is about our design work, and how we communicate. So I don’t think anybody could argue that now that we’ve come out of COVID, or almost post COVID, that people don’t know the value of instructional designers. I say this all the time that when I’m working with faculty, it’s not convincing them to do something now, it’s them saying, how do I do it right?
How do I make it better? But there’s just so many. So the value is there and the value is recognized, but we have to continue bringing the resources and the awareness of what the needs are for the students and for the faculty and for ourselves. When we’re talking about refocusing on our design, really looking at our time management of how to go back and improve all these courses and have larger workloads. And then communication.
So in my experiences, we have the ear of our colleagues, whether it’s university, if you’re in an industry or at a college, you have their ear and we have, we’ve been seen. So now we have to keep it. So this now brings us to where we’re going to use the chat and zoom.
So find your chat box. And so we want to ask you a couple of questions. And in thinking about the value and refocusing design and communication, and really just reassessing, realigning our work, we have to know why are we instructional designers? What is the purpose that we’re serving? Why did we get into this field? What’s our objective? And if we can answer those questions and align our tasks and the value of our location and our health, can align with those, then I think we can start seeing a path to overcoming burnout. So we want you to use the chat to share your why and remind as you’re reading others, hopefully you’re reminded and you’re inspired by each other about why you’re doing this work and why you continue to do this work. So we’ll look at your chats and read those.
Dr. Jan Brott: Thanks to help others improve the student experience for online learning. Yes, definitely. Others popping in. Well, while others are popping in, oh, here we go. Holly, do you want to take this one?
Dr. Holly Collier: Help to create equitable course design to reach each student.
Dr. Jan Brott: Oh, now they’re really coming in.
Dr. Holly Collier: Improve the quality of online courses. Yes. Values. To ensure students are equitably prepared for last year exams. Q and so that we meet the needs of students.
Dr. Jan Brott: Yeah, that I see a common thread in meeting the needs of each has been so challenging because, you know, we’re we’re about to burn out obviously, but they are too. So, you know, that I think that’s on the forefront of all of our minds is that’s why we do this because we want to make sure that our students or our trainees, whoever we’re working with our faculty, you know, because ID’s work with faculty to make sure that they are served in a way that they need to be served. Oh, so I like this at UHD, our soul is our people. We invest for each other to ensure that our students get the best experience on campus. That’s perfect. That’s the think Lee says that I think very well. Absolutely.
Dr. Holly Collier: So even if we get into, you know, the the lows of, you know, it’s there’s just so much to do. You know, we come back to that why and that passion to just reinvigorate your work. One of the whenever we just it was that week after spring break, nobody was going back and I told our faculty, I said, don’t look five weeks on the road. Look at next week and look at your students. Just focus on your students. That’s focus on why you’re teaching.
You know, you might really, really, really love biology, but I hope you really, really love your students even more. And, you know, you want them to succeed. So if you show that first and then, you know, the teaching is going to come and I think that’s the same with us. We just have to remember why we’re doing it and not let everything else kind of block that out.
Let that smoke from the burnout block it out. All right. So now we’re going to dive into these three areas of value design and communication. We titled the side the value of the change mediator. I did this instead of changing maker because I don’t know, I guess for me, I’m not making them do it, but I’m hoping to inspire and lead and guide the faculty to the change that’s needed for the students. But again, it’s exhausting, especially when you have so much to do. And Jan is going to share a solution about how she helps and does this process of mediation.
Dr. Jan Brott: Well, when I was getting my master’s in training and development, the program consisted of half education classes and half counseling classes. Upon graduation and entering the workforce, I learned why.
Technology can be anxiety producing for many people and sometimes they may need to vent about an issue they’re having, or maybe they’re just having a bad day. So I just started using what I call the 10 minute option when meeting with a faculty member. For the first 10 minutes of a one hour meeting, I would just ask, how are you doing? And this would give them time to vent about whatever they may be struggling with. And it also showed I was interested in them as a person.
Then after about 10 minutes, I would begin to segue the conversation to focus more on the goals of the meeting. And this seemed to work really well for mediating the anxieties associated with change.
Dr. Holly Collier: It’s like, it’s almost like riding a roller coaster with somebody. You see their emotions and it’s not just the work itself, but you have to help them deal with their emotions. And so having that relationship and having that opportunity, Jan, to build those relationships can help you be that leader in that relationship.
Who is wanted? So sometimes if the people that are present at the table don’t fully understand our role as an instructional designer, it can be frustrating. I think it could cause some burnout. So we want to make sure that we assess and determine what is the role that’s needed at the table or what they expect at the table. So we put on here instructional designer or instructional technologist. When we were, when Jane and I were defining this, we were looking at the instructional technologist is that troubleshooting, working with classroom technology or whatever learning management system you’re using, the technology there. Whereas the designer is doing those things, can do those things, maybe more than some. But they’re also doing or have that pedagogical knowledge and training to provide to the faculty member.
So just making sure that we know and that it’s clear. We’re not assuming that anybody knows all the time will instructional designer. It’s not a graphic designer, but they know what we’re doing and what we’re here to do when we get to the table.
I think can help us move forward and overcome that burnout. But there is that gray line, that gray area between designer and technologist. And so, you know, if you have to manage your time between the two roles, make sure that you know which time you’re doing which role if you say, I’m going to work on this time, but on this time, I’m I’m going to be the instructional designer. I’m not going to worry about just the troubleshooting or or whatever multiple roles you have. And I think Jan, you shared some of the survey data about most people on this call have so many different roles. Right, right. So just make sure you delineate which role you’re working in.
Dr. Jan Brott: Yeah, I know. Earlier I shared people mentioned faculty development, supporting faculty with course design, LMS support, etc, etc. So yes, delineation is important. In the same context, location and value go hand in hand. Public colleges and universities are struggling with the outdated with outdated policies for work from home. We hear it’s never been done before, which can be frustrating. But it’s important to understand the perspective of other roles involved in the process. For example, human resource administrators may be concerned with potential liabilities associated with working from home, or the perception that if one position is allowed to work from home, that will bring an avalanche of requests to make other positions remote as well. It really is a complex issue, but one that really needs to be addressed.
Dr. Holly Collier: And again, I’m just going back to that. I understand the difficulty that some people may have because we have a perspective here that we don’t hire remote, but I can’t find an instructional designer. So that really just underscores the need to have conversations about the goals of your college, your university, or your industry about your policies and about what is the value here for instructional design.
All right. So how has COVID changed the role? Overnight, instructional designers leaped from the institutional shadows to the forefront of digital strategy in higher education. Jan found that quote and I applauded her when I read that.
I think it can be summed up for me very, very quick that the pandemic didn’t happen in one night. And as instructional designers, you cannot bear the weight of restoring order to online learning or to classes using technology. You can’t restore that order in one night. It’s going to take time. And you have to find the organization to deal with it. And so I go back to project management, defining what you can do, what’s in your scope and what’s out of scope for the work that you’re doing, and making that strategic plan on how to move forward and regain control. And then not only you knowing what that plan is and knowing what’s in your scope and out of scope, but sharing that plan and making sure that your colleagues, your administrators, your faculty, that they know what that plan is, and that they’re on board with that plan. And making sure that your efforts are aligned with, again, wherever you work, if it’s an industry, a university or college, making sure that your efforts are in line with their goals, and then hone in on their goals to make sure that if you need resources or moving forward with different technologies or trainings, that those are all aligned with what they expect. And so you’re not doing anything, well, we all do stuff that’s extra, right? But that you’re not spinning your wheels and that everybody’s on the same page. But project management has become very valuable for me in the last two years.
Dr. Jan Brott: So I want to mention this quote from Peter Drucker, some of you may be familiar with him. He was a management consultant who coined the term knowledge worker. But did you also know he was involved with the SMART objectives, you know, the SMART acronym, using measurable learning or performance goals. But he said, the most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said. Now we know the importance of body language and vocal variation in the communication process. So using Zoom meetings added a whole nother level of complexity for communication. We’ve had to learn how to better tune into faculty or whoever we serve to interpret the needs that they have and to foster communication with a variety of academic services or support.
Dr. Holly Collier: Yeah, so, so in thinking about communication, we’ve listed three areas here that we felt can help with, help with communication but not assuming that, you know, that we can assume that people know, right. So one of the examples here with with faculty. If you’ve worked now with faculty, it was the first time you’d worked with them was during COVID, then don’t assume that they knew or still know what your processes are to make your job functional.
So go back and make sure that that people know what your process is, is it quality matters and what does that process actually look like what are the expectations and don’t make assumptions that people know that they know that process to work with you. With administration. You know if you need or don’t have a committee, I know people hate committees. We’ve taken a new approach at our college with committees and it’s become more of this task force oriented and, and kind of realigned, but it’s, it’s allowing us to make sure that that people know what’s going on in every area. So, if committees aren’t aren’t the horrible thing at your place, then committees might be a way for you to make sure that that you’re communicating with people across your college or university or the industry, and that you’re getting feedback and sharing feedback. Another example, I’m just to kind of manage the amount of people that select for me it’s we don’t have an instructional designer so to manage all of the faculty.
I’ve started using round tables where now instead of just focusing one on one. I can see okay there’s five faculty here that are really interested in oh we are so let’s bring them to the table together. And let’s not keep them isolated like I can’t have 10 meetings in one day let’s have one meeting and with 10 people. And it’s become very, very beneficial, and the faculty are just as knowledgeable and have just as much experience with their teaching experience that they can share with each other. So, finding innovative ways to try and connect with everybody in academics.
Dr. Jan Brott: Yeah, and the next thing we’re going to look at is identifying the lines of support. In particular, we’re going to look at that it help desk. Often is a gray area between like e learning and it help desk responsibilities.
This can even be more challenging since a learning can actually be part of it, or they can be an academic fairs or the library, you know, we’re kind of all over the place. So it’s important to have conversations to identify who is responsible for what. So we’re not passing someone back and forth between offices, you know who need help. To do this we really need to be proactive to avoid frustration for you and the IT help desk, and most especially the faculty and students we serve.
Dr. Holly Collier: So lastly, let’s talk about communication and health. So, for me, when we talk about mental health, I need to make sure that that I understand. And that’s that I am understood also right.
And if I, and that’s, that’s very broad that’s like with any relationship. If it’s with a faculty member sitting there or an administrator that I’m speaking with, you know, we have to all be understood and if we know what the goals are and how we’re going to go about that, then I can plan, and I know, you know, a plan for communication a plan for moving forward. But that also allows me to have that piece right if I can plan things out, then I can sleep at night and I can go on a walk if I plan in that time. So then that gets into not only my mental health but also physical health so that communication is very important I think to, at least for me, for my health. And it’s not always pretty. I don’t always communicate correctly, or, you know, we miss opportunities but so make sure that you have your, your thing or your person or your place to go to, to find your bliss, if it’s walking down the road with your dog or, or Jan, you know, with your cats or. I don’t know if it’s the two kids if that’s really my bliss or not. But find that. Jan, what do you think about that.
Dr. Jan Brott: Well, I agree. I mean, we don’t always communicate well and, and I think we need to forgive ourselves when we do. For me, it’s setting boundaries, especially since I work remotely. And also I’m a people pleaser by nature. So which which is great because it makes me really good with customer service but not always good with saying what my needs are or saying okay I’m going to draw the line to the boundary here.
So sometimes it’s difficult for me not to go and check my email on the weekend or, you know, I need to prioritize time away from work, even though my office is just down the hall.
Dr. Holly Collier: So we’re interested now. We’re going to put you back out into some breakout rooms and let you talk about some common challenges that you are experiencing or have experienced. And what are some solutions that you’re using or planning to use to overcome those challenges. Okay, all rooms are open.
Dr. Holly Collier: Okay. All right, it looks like everybody has rejoined. So we hope that by, you know, having that opportunity to talk with with each other that you might have learned something from someone else. But that is, Jan, I think all that we had in our presentation. Do you want to add anything.
Dr. Jan Brott: Well, no, I’m really happy that we have so much time left because I really want to take this opportunity to allow participants to ask questions or share some of the things that they’ve been experiencing. So please participants take the floor. You can either do it you can ask. Can you ask to be. I guess we could. How do you ask to be unmuted. I guess in your self. Oh, you just don’t read. Well, that’s easy. I’m going to read it.
Greta: This is Greta. I’d like to contribute. Hi, Rhonda. Oh, the conference was fabulous. I’m still enjoying looking back on it. Thank you so much of all for having this webinar, because we are all stressed that were a lot of us are the only ones at our university or in our department that do what we do. So we were able to, I was able to talk with Amy Gates and let you know, and we shared and it just felt good to be able to communicate with someone else who experiences and understands the amount of work that’s involved.
So bravo that it really helps. You know, where I am. I wear all the hats, even though I was hired to do one specific task, because I’m a technology person, I’m a graphic design person, I’m a video person. Now they want me to wear all those hats as well. It was unpopular when I said, whoa, hold on. I can’t do it all and I won’t do it all.
It made me very unpopular, but I had to do it for myself. And so now it’s a matter of their priorities on the instructional design. Let me get the classes ready for the first day of class. And then as time permits, I take on the other responsibilities.
Dr. Jan Brott: You are not alone. Right. And the boundaries are important. You gotta know. Yeah, and say what they are. Thanks. Thanks so much, Greta. Anyone else would like to share or questions. These people, everyone here is all your support. Y’all. So take a look around. The TxDLA is your support.
Rachel: Hi, can you hear me okay? So I’ll just share what I discussed with my person that I apologize. I can’t remember her name from our last little breakout session.
We were both in similar situations. We both work for colleges and we’re starting new programs and we’re both looking toward meeting accreditation requirements with fully online courses and trying to meet the lecture requirements without having faculty in place that are there who can record videos that we can upload. It’s quite challenging to try to find the resources.
And so anyway, I just thought it was interesting that we were both facing the same challenge as instructional designers working with our subject matter experts, but yet, still not having quite enough resources or know exactly how to calculate those lecture hours without just putting in videos. Thanks, Rachel.
Dr. Jan Brott: Holly, what do you see on the chat? Oh, I’m sorry. Go ahead. Oh, go ahead, Amy.
Amy: Oh, well, you know, and thanks Greta and Rachel for sharing, because it’s just nice to be amongst a group of people, you know, that feel your pain. And I think a lot of times what we’ve experienced is, you know, it’s the top down, they don’t provide the why behind what we’re doing. So sometimes what happens is right now I’m drowning in course reviews. So, you know, we do a lot of online reviews to get them online teaching certified with some instructors as I was telling Greta. Sometimes they have no intention of ever, you know, teaching online or teaching a hybrid type scenario.
But thinking that remote teaching is online teaching. So, again, it’s the, you know, it’s the vocabulary. And so just because you teach synchronously and you teach via zoom, they’ll go, Oh, well, you know, all I have to do is lecture and, you know, here’s the here’s the homework. So again, the pedagogy and androgyne behind that is missing. And then when you are looking at a course, you know, they’re, you know, floored like, Well, why are you telling me all of this. So that’s what we’re experiencing. It’s almost like it.
Dr. Holly Collier: You have to go back to, we’re not doing this right now with the NRL of instructional design but with our data. And we’re going back and we are, we’re writing just definitions. So that everybody knows what the definition of this data set is.
And so it’s, it’s almost like that going back and going, Okay, what is the definition for this type of learning and what does it need. And while that will take away the time that we need to actually do course reviews and work with faculty that might in the long run save us time and save frustration.
Amy: Yes, most definitely. Thank you.
Dr. Holly Collier: So on the chat we have make sure your pay matches what you are doing. Yes, I know. Yes, I feel so much better knowing others are dealing with the same challenges. Amy what the university consider contracting individuals to help with QM reviews.
Amy: That’s a good question. I think we had some budget cuts. So yeah, I mean that’s something that we would have to consider.
Dr. Holly Collier: And then we have to remember that professors were not trained as teachers, most of them, they are experts in their field. And for me, sometimes it’s the, it’s, it’s, it’s our supervisors that that don’t fully understand the work so I don’t think she would mind me sharing this but so my, my vice president. I actually took, and I said, you know what, let me review your class because we still get to teach one class. And so by taking the time to review her class, which was extremely scary right you’re telling your boss.
Here’s what I’m, you know, here’s some considerations. But then she, she understood and knew then what I was going to be providing to the faculty, and she also knew how much time that would take, which also fallen in with okay, I need a full time instructional design.
Greta: So, well I would, I always kind of, especially now go back to this idea that we’ve always had which is that kind of that iterative approach, and don’t throw every single thing at the faculty member of all the things that they could do and stuff like that it’s like okay let’s get them into it. Let’s get them comfortable, especially if they’ve never done it or they’re coming out of a bad experience that they might have had the past two years and figure out, okay let’s reverse that okay let’s take a step back. And let’s see what was successful. And let’s then look at that and then build on that and maybe change some things what or do you excited about what happened that was great you know things like that to you know, kind of rethink about where we all came from as instructional design before COVID ever started right that this is how we work with faculty and I think sometimes we need to kind of take that step back and say okay, let’s go back to our roots, and you know, it’s your why you know so you know let’s kind of go back to that for ourselves and rethink about what does that look like how did that feel. How can we regain that back.
Dr. Holly Collier: Absolutely. We had two more chat.
Amy: Thanks for on there. Yes, thank you.
Dr. Holly Collier: And they are not trying to create learning experiences online it can be a huge challenge, especially for individuals who don’t have technical or creative skills, having that empathy. When we work with faculty. Totally agree Kelly we often work with adjunct faculty that have that are hired as the SMEs, but not given the time to prepare their classes well.
Shane: You know one thing I’ll add and this this doesn’t tie to professors when I am worked with the Pasadena virtual school for Pasadena ISD. One of the things that we established was, even though they had to be WIC certified or you know web instructor certified before they could teach our online classes we had a prep course that they had to go through so they actually had to experience what it was like to be an online student. Before they even were able to dive in and start building their courses and whatnot now granted I know it’s a public school and there are CPE credits and teachers have to go through regular training. But in my dream world professors would have to do a little bit of a class experience before they could teach online now cove it through everything in a mix and my dream world could never happen. But somehow making sure they understand what it’s like to be a student and and how their classes, how the how they set up their classes really do impact the students. Again, that’s a dream world.
Rachel: Yeah, it’s funny Shane that you mentioned that, you know, some faculty struggle with the student experience, but they’re expecting the students to not to experience you know to be fine and be able to work through it and. So, I think it’s important even if they are struggling with that student experience why are they struggling with that and how can they make sure that their class is one that students may not be able to struggle with or if they do how can they help them through it so I think it’s a great experience. I think it’s a great experience.
Dr. Jan Brott: Well, you know one of the things that I just thought of it as we’re conversing is one of the challenges students had was internet connectivity some of them didn’t have really good internet connection so you know my question to y’all was how how or did that impact the instructional design. For y’all.
Amy: Well, I know for us. I mean we had all the sister colleges had hotspots that they provided to their students. So those that did not have internet connectivity could go to a place. Of course it’s not convenient, you know they’d have to like work in their car or do something but we also had a laptop loaner program as well so in case they did not have the technology. That was there for them as well so hotspots and the equipment were provided, but still, you know, again, it’s still proof you know provides a big. It’s still a barrier so if what if they don’t have a car, you know to get to the hotspot that would be problematic.
Dr. Blackburn: So, I was wondering, and again, back in my Pasadena days and we did a roll out to students of devices, and this was 12 years ago. We had partner, or I guess it was partnered with some of the fast food restaurants in the local areas in the community that did provide Wi-Fi, you know we would partner with them to make sure that even even though our students may not buy food there they may not whatever. They could still access the Wi-Fi and be present in those places. And, and you know I mean it worked out really well and it was kind of neat because it wasn’t just a library or a fast food place or whatever it was places that you might not expect. Right and it was really neat to be able to have those kinds of partnerships.
Granted the protections were not in place. You know like they would be in the school district. But I wonder if some of our, you know, restaurants and places like that would be willing to do things like that for our college students to like just, you know, like all you Starbucks is an example, you don’t have to buy a coffee or whatever if you go in there. I wonder who would partner to help just kind of publicly say hey we’re here we have an open Wi-Fi, please come use this if you need it.
Dr. Jan Brott: I know libraries are have filled that that need to some extent.
[Transcript modified slightly for clarity]
