Large Scale Curriculum Redesign Across The Disciplines in a Distributed Learning Environment Nicola Martinez Director of Curriculum and Instructional Design Center for Distance Learning

Who We Are: Empire State College  Locations around New York State  The Center for Distance Learning (CDL) serves adult students around the world

Center for Distance Learning  Adult learning centered  offers asynchronous online courses in five, 15- week semesters per year  leading enroller in the SUNY Learning Network  partner with several institutions such as eArmyU & Navy, public & private organizations, labor unions

Center for Distance Learning Course Statistics  330 distinct online courses, many with multiple sections  46 courses developed/revised for Sept 03  50+ courses in development for Jan 04  68 courses developed or revised for Sept 04  70 courses in development/revision cycle for Jan 04  All courses on a two year revision cycle Managed using the Coursetrak system

Areas of Study The Arts | Business, Management & Economics | Community & Human Services | Communications, Humanities & Cultural Studies | Educational Studies | Historical Studies | Human Development | Labor Studies | Science, Math & Technology | Social Theory, Structure & Change

Curriculum Committee  The Curriculum Committee oversees the approval of course proposals and development of policies and procedures for Center for Distance Learning courses.  The committee provides leadership in identifying and discussing curricular issues on the course and overall curricular levels.  Committee Members represent each of the four area of study subgroups, comprised of 17 area coordinators representing all areas of study. 

Curriculum and Instructional Design Group  Advises area coordinators on curriculum development  Shepherds developers through the development cycle  Provides pedagogical, assessment, and instructional development training as needed  Designs course development processes  Facilitates team development sessions  Aligns support for course developers  Assures academic excellence and design quality of courses  Oversees program evaluation and improvements.

CDL Course Development Teams  Development Team = multidisciplinary group in charge of creation, conversion or revision of Center for Distance Learning courses. A development team includes one or more of the following:  An area coordinator  A coordinator of instructional design and curriculum development for the course area of study  One or more course developers  One or more instructional designers  A multimedia instructional designer  And a librarian.  Developer  Course creator/content expert: a member of the development team. S/he develops the course content and assessment activities.

Course Development Resources and Support Examples of Resources and Support Provided to Developers:  Instructional Design Assistance  Pedagogical Advice  Library Review of Course and Research Assignments  Assistance Designing Learning Activities  Media Rich Content Identification  Multimedia Learning Objects  Website Identification, Evaluation, and Compilation  Digital Image Identification  Best Practice Examples Provided

Curriculum Redesign Goals  At the macro level, redesign curriculum across the center  At the micro level, take a systematic approach to the improvement of course design, including:  look and feel  pedagogical approaches  standard documents  visual learning components  media rich content enhancements  library research activities

Faculty Contributions  Course Models:  Hassenger  Oaks  Carnevale  Ball  Design Ideas  Best Practices  Exemplary materials  to share with other faculty as part of the curricular and pedagogical redesign project.

Our Approach  Develop a new standard for course information documents and implement them in the courses  Create a new design for CDL web courses to increase navigability and overall consistencies in look, feel, and format  Enrich courses with multimedia components and other graphic enhancements  Include library referenced materials in all courses, with at least one library-based learning activity per course  Identify and implement best practices in the pursuit of academic and pedagogical excellence in web course development for adult learners taking distance learning courses

Course Ratings  We established a three-tiered categorization of courses based on the inclusion of the above recommendations and the application of a new course design.  All new and revised courses are reviewed an assigned the following ratings

Course Rating System Table 1. Tier 1 Ratings Legend Tier Rating Tier 3Exemplary Course Tier 2Acceptable  Some criteria met, revisions needed Tier 1Not Acceptable (recommend cancel) NRNot Rated

Course Rating System Table 1. Tier 1 Ratings Legend  Tier information and classification is generated as a result of the information captured in The Empire State College Online Course Evaluation Checklist.  All courses are considered unrated until they have been reviewed with this instrument.  The evaluation piece associated with The Empire State College Online Course Evaluation Checklist happens at several levels.

Online Course Evaluation Checklist Table 1. Tier 1 Ratings Legend  Administered during and after a new course has been developed, before delivery  Before an old course is revised to identify specific areas targeted for improvement  After an old course has been revised to ensure that it is complete and meets all baseline criteria for a Tier 3 course 

The Course Resource Needs Analysis Table 1. Tier 1 Ratings Legend Information captured in the Course Resource Needs Analysis Form is used to generate work requests for  technical assistance  library assistance  multimedia learning object creation  digital media research and implementation  instructional design/pedagogical support  copyright permissions 

Curricular Redesign Project:  New Online Courses  Print to Web Course Conversions  Major Revisions of Online Courses  Residencies to Online and Vice Versa

New Online Courses  Easiest to Implement  Pre-designed templates with pre-filled standard documents  Successful delivery of Tier 3 courses

Print to Web Course Conversions  More difficult than new  Challenges: Legacy approach Challenge converting from static to dynamic environment

Legacy Courses  No images or media enrichment. Did not benefit from multimedia specialist intervention.  May or may not have library research component. Did not benefit from librarian-researched resources.  Did not benefit from newly available library of shared resources for developers, including explicit best practice guidelines for learning activities and sample assignments  No standard structure  No standard documents  Naming inconsistencies  Content may be extremely well developed, or may need revision as well

Revisions  New course model  Image enrichment and multimedia intervention  Librarian-researched resources  Content enhancement  Revising of learning activities  Perhaps a reorganization of course sequencing

Successful Revision Method 1.Fill the new, empty course template with a pre-designed course model 2.Rename and renumber the old course materials. 3.Drop them into the new model at the bottom of the new materials 4.A library of course development resources is also placed in the new template

Successful Revision Method 5.A course developer and instructional designer copy and paste the old materials into the new template. The developer takes this opportunity to review content and learning activities. S/he revises the material as appropriate. 6.Requests for images and learning go to the multimedia specialist 7.Library resource requests go to the librarian 8.Instructional designer assists the developer to make additional structural changes to the course as appropriate

Course Readiness  Pre-Publishing Refinements 1.Final edit 2.Format review 3.Evaluation 4.Content Review by content expert

Conclusion  Large Scale Curriculum Improvement is an Ongoing Center for Distance Learning Project. Current projects include:  The goal of bringing all CDL courses to a tier 3 level within 2 years  A media, learning, and development research team focusing on researching next generation interactive media for learning enrichment  Implementing visual learning across the curriculum, beginning with science, marketing, and Fire Services courses.

Questions? Contact Information: x 776