You may be wondering how you will engage with the Dutton Institute in creating an online course. Here’s a summary of key ideas and a rough description of the timeline, which takes approximately two semesters.
Collaborative Effort: The process is collaborative, between you as the course author and a learning design team that includes designers, multimedia specialists, and technical editors.
Your Responsibilities: You should appreciate the instructional design process, meet deadlines, collaborate effectively, and create engaging course materials.
Skills Needed: Excellent written and verbal skills, organizational skills, and comfort with technology are essential.
Commitment: You should be self-motivated, open to feedback, and willing to comply with accessibility and copyright guidelines.
Phase One
During the first phase of development, you and the learning designer will collaborate to create the raw content for the course. You’ll meet regularly to map the course structure and assessment strategy and review drafted materials. These meetings help orient you both and ensure that you and the team make necessary progress.
The learning designer with work with you to draft a course development schedule that includes milestones and deliverables. As we collaborate with you on the development of the course, you’ll gain the necessary technical, administrative, and pedagogical strategies for distance learning. You’ll also be able to access resources like examples and templates such as those on the Institute’s Teaching and Learning Showcase.
One of the first tasks is to create a Course Map, outlining the course topics, goals, course objectives, structure, and required resources. This map helps ensure everyone is aligned and identifies additional skills needed for development.
As a course author, you’ll typically produce a sample lesson, which the learning designer and team turn into a draft prototype. It is an iterative process that may involve multiple revisions until both parties are satisfied. You’ll then continue drafting lessons, following the same collaborative process.
Ideally, by the end of the first phase, you and the designer will have generated at least half of the core course materials (sometimes more!), including all student learning activities and assessment strategies. Alternatively, you and the designer may have focused on all the course content, leaving the learning activities and assessment strategies for Phase Two. Both options are possible.
Phase Two
During the second phase, you’ll work with the learning design team to finalize the course materials, focusing on the remaining lessons or integrating student activities and assessments. You’ll also finalize other course website components, like the online syllabus and course orientation.
Real vs. Ideal
The ideal process rarely happens. Teaching, research, and personal commitments can sometimes get faculty authors off-track. Missed deadlines can cause a domino effect, impacting subsequent steps. Effective communication among team members is crucial for success. Regular communication, regardless of the method, ensures smooth progress. Project reports are disseminated monthly to all project stakeholders--if things are starting to go off-track, that is a good chance to get the project back on schedule!
Phase Three
Once a course is developed and running, you’ll be able to spend your time engaging with your students rather than writing the next lesson. Still, the process isn’t complete. Courses undergo formative and summative evaluations, with minor revisions each semester and substantial revisions as needed. You’ll continue to have the support of the learning design team as the course is offered, and we'll encourage you to keep a list of items you'd like to revisit before the next offering. Your designer will help you to make these changes until the course is relatively "stable."