Course Redesign

I thought it might be beneficial to share recent research, published August 2016 in the Inside Higher Ed on the topic of Course Design.

"University explores whether redesigning courses according to best practices actually leads to improvements for faculty members and students” by Carl Straumsheim. The result was a report released last month that compared 29 online course sections that had been redesigned according to best practices to 664 online sections that hadn’t. Across all the metrics the university’s researchers looked at -- from the time students spent in the online course to how they evaluated the course and the grades they earned -- the redesigned courses posted better results. The findings offer some early evidence that those processes can lead to measurable improvements for faculty members and students.

Rubrics created by the university systems in states such as California and New York focus mainly on course design. Other evaluation programs, such the one offered by the Online Learning Consortium, take a more holistic view, reviewing areas such as faculty training and technology support. Colleges often use several rubrics and programs to diagnose the overall health of their programs.