Course Design Disruption

This week I would like to share two articles from IHE that may provide us with timely considerations for our next steps in designing courses. The first is a book entitled, "Failure to Disrupt: Why Technology Alone Can’t Transform Education" by Reich (2020). The author points out that "learning is enormously complex, and the structures that have evolved over many decades at every level do not disappear when a new technology is introduced. Instead, new technologies get absorbed by existing organizational structures and cultural norms." He further reminds us that "teaching and learning environments that are not built around an intimate educator/student coaching and feedback model will be ineffective. We need good research and more investment in learning science to figure out how to effectively iterate towards leveraging technologies to drive improvements in access."

The second article by Mintz (2020) is entitled, "Let’s Not Return to the Old Normal." The author suggests that the key to institutional sustainability lies in entrepreneurship, experimentation and an enlarged mission. He suggests practical ways to do accomplish this:

1. Embrace data and analysis to evaluate and optimize programs, identify curricular bottlenecks, target support services, and assess the effectiveness of student success initiatives.

2. Boost students’ Return On Investment (ROI), which include the quality of instruction, the level of student-faculty interaction, access to high-impact educational practices, support for career development and engagement in campus activities.

3. Increase retention rates, academic momentum and students’ academic success. There are many reasons for lower student success, which include receiving poor first-semester grades; closed out of their first-choice major; can’t get into courses; failure to receive adequate advising; feeling isolated and disconnected; or life got into the way and the institution didn’t do enough to keep them. We should intervene to “process analyze” academic journeys, to optimize course schedules, to remove hurdles to graduation, to redesign gateway classes and to enhance students’ sense of belonging and create first- and second-year catapults to boost students’ momentum.

4. Create greater curricular coherence, perhaps aligning mathematics and statistics courses with broad areas of student interest, whether business, health care, the social sciences or the arts and humanities. Offer lower-division courses in the digital humanities, the medical humanities, the history of science and technology, or courses that offer humanistic perspectives on business, engineering and new media.

5. Pursue new markets such as transfer students, post-baccs and working adults seeking short-term, non-degree credentials, etc.

6. Forge alliances such as course sharing and 2+2 programs in high-demand; or supplementing study abroad with the opportunity to spend a semester at another campus.

7. Make the academic experience more attractive, which might include offering cohorts and learning communities to place relationships at the center of the experience. Expand research and internship opportunities. Integrate certification and skills badges. Offer more studio, field and clinical experiences and workshop classes.

These are the areas where the author thinks we have to change:

We must better serve populations previously underserved.

We must do much more to advance equity.

We must design for greater flexibility, which will require us to offer intensive, targeted advising; degree mapping and career planning; bridge programs, tutoring and grants targeting retention and completion and more on-campus jobs.