Course design

Through close collaboration with faculty, our instructional designers can help you design purposeful learning objectives, create engaging course objects and facilitate meaningful course design.

Whether you wish to design a new online course, redesign an existing online course or seek expertise in updating your activities or assessments, we are available to assist. Our designers collaborate with you to:

• Align instructional material, learning activities and assessments with stated learning objectives (at the course and program level).
• Create learning activities that help learners better engage with course content and their peers, make connections, understand and retain new information, practice skills and apply concepts.
• Maximize student access, learning and engagement by incorporating Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and other evidence-based teaching practices.
• Create engaging and digitally-accessible multimedia (e.g., videos, animations, infographics).
• Pedagogically integrate Canvas and other University-supported educational technologies and resources to enhance your instructional strategy and student learning.
• Organize your course content in Canvas so that it is easy for students to access and navigate.
• Implement strategies to reduce the time spent preparing materials and grading while teaching (e.g., rubrics).

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Areas of design support

Design Services offers two types of design support to faculty: course development and design consultations.

Course development

Course development projects are a semester-long collaboration that involves faculty, an instructional designer and an experience designer. This partnership aims to design and develop a complete online course over a 16-week timeframe.

We work proactively, planning a semester ahead to ensure a smooth launch. For instance, if you are developing a course for the fall semester, we begin our work in the preceding spring semester, and similarly for spring courses in the fall semester.

These projects include both new course designs and redesigns. Course development projects can be part of a broader programmatic support initiative or standalone courses.

Recommended enrollment dates

• Fall courses: no later than March 15
• Spring courses: no later than Sept. 15
• Summer courses: no later than Feb. 15

Design consultations

Design consultations are shorter, more focused collaborations. In these consultations, faculty work with our designers to identify and address specific challenges within their online course. Our goal is to provide targeted support that enhances the quality and effectiveness of your course materials and design.