Extreme Course Makeover

1
Extreme Course Makeover

• Put together one traditionally delivered course,
  deserving faculty and students, several talented
  instructional designers and IT specialists, three
  months, and what do you get? The answer is
  Extreme Course Makeover.

2
What is a learning and teaching center to do?

• Status Quo Too few incentives, resources or time
  for faculty to re-think their teaching or
  redesign courses but thenBUDGET CRISIS!!
• ISU President Gregory Geoffroy, April, 2009,
  Iowa Board of Regents
• "Approximately 350 course offerings will be cut
  to deal with the 38 million budget
  shortfallstudents will see larger class sizes
  and certain classes offered less frequently
• Faculty responsibilities will be changed -
  Expanded advising teaching assignments -
  Increase in average number of students taught by
  each professor

3
What is a learning and teaching center to do?

• Rahm Emanuel, White House Chief of Staff,
  November, 2008
• "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.
  And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do
  things you think you could not do before.

4
Moving on the opportunity

• Stressed faculty will be open to trying new
  teaching methods and technologies
• Course management efficiencies with CMS
• Electronic grade book
• TA and lab coordination
• Electronic communications
• Web delivered content
• Online quizzes, assignment and plagiarism tools
• Maximizing interaction with instructors,
  students, content
• Student response systems (clickers)
• Web conferencing and collaboration tools

5
Rapid faculty development

• Survey associate deans and department chairs to
  find faculty with increased teaching assignments
  or newly merged large lecture courses
• Identify faculty champions or advisors who have
  already made it through course redesigns and can
  share insight, success
• Proven course redesign approach -gt National
  Center for Academic Transformation
  http//www.center.rpi.edu/ provides leadership
  in using information technology to redesign
  learning environments to produce better learning
  outcomes for students at a reduced cost to the
  institution
• Refocus summer staff time, faculty development
  programming, and student support hours to launch
  Extreme Course Makeover
• Assemble instructional design and IT support
  S.W.A.T. team enlist collaborators at college
  and dept. level

6
Rapid instructional design

• Review with faculty the desired learner outcomes
  for course
• Inventory and map current course content,
  teaching methods, and delivery modes
• Brainstorm a list of ideas with design team (ID
  models R2D2, Rapid Prototyping, etc.)
• Because of constraints on time and resources use
  80/20 (Juran, Six Sigma) rule to identify
  two-three large impact course redesign strategies
  to implement
• Provide instructor and course with integrated and
  ongoing (two semesters) support system for
  successful adoption (Everett M. Rogers, Diffusion
  of Innovations)