University teachers’ design work: implications for an urgent shift to digital

Abstract

This is a response to Bennett et al.’s (2016) “The Process of Designing for Learning: Understanding University Teachers’ Design Work.” We examine this study of faculty approaches to course design in order to connect the authors’ findings to implications for course design practices in the current context of shifting courses online. The design processes of experienced faculty are the primary subjects of the study, which may have implications for how institutions approach supporting faculty efforts to design courses under time constraints. However, research shows that less experienced faculty may be unprepared to effectively redesigning courses under time constraints. The primary approaches to course design are the individual approach, where a faculty designer follows his or her own design process and the centralized or team approach, where a subject matter expert joins an instructional designer and/or additional educational design or technology specialists to develop courses. Institutions need to consider how much of their faculty have 10 years or more of experience in order to determine which approach would work best.