Monday, December 1, 2014

IDT Trend: University Setting

Trend

The setting I most closely identify with is the University setting. I work for UNC-Chapel Hill at the Friday Center for Continuing Education. We administer all of the University's online undergraduate courses. A very large part of my job is to work with faculty and grad-student instructors to prepare each course for a new semester.

Universities are moving more and more content online. Whereas before, professors could simply type up a lecture and slap it on a website, colleges are now realizing the importance of good design in order to engage their students and improve retention. Due to higher levels of subject-matter specialization, and the fact that instructional technology is becoming more and more sophisticated, ID at a university level is transitioning to a model in which the instructional designer builds the course, and faculty serves as subject-matter experts.

Resources

  1. FacultyFocus: Instructional Design. This blog examines ID principles, trends, and developments with a University audience in mind. Entries address cutting edge topics such as gamification, and how it can providelearners tangible milestones and expectations of learning; as well as the anatomyof successful group projects.
  2. BallState University: Instructional Design and Faculty Support for Online Teaching. This resource from Ball State is a working model of the sort of ID support a university can offer its faculty. I'm using this site in my job as a starting point for training new faculty in online pedagogy. It gives a comprehensive resource on how faculty can get up and running online, and offers help from instructional designers whenever they need it.

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