By Ellen Brandenberger
In my first post I looked at the evolution of a new role in light of MOOCs, the course developer. In the second, I will explore the contrasts between instructional design and course development, and the ramifications of these contrasts for teaching and learning in higher education.
To do so, I conducted interviews of individuals in course development roles at four different higher education institutions. These eight individuals sat down with me for 1-2 hours each, and I used semi-structured interviews to explore their roles, responsibilities, and qualifications. All course developers worked for higher education institutions that were members of the edX Consortia.
The field of instructional design and distance learning has been around for decades. Corporate and university trainings were often created with the needs of the institution in mind, providing tailored professional development to employees within an institution or university to overcome scale or distance (Kirschner).
In addition, instructional designers, often based out of university Information Technology departments, were consulted by university faculty to aid with the integration of technology into classrooms and curricula (Paloff). Traditional to the field of Instructional Design were models such as the Quality Matters Rubric (Quality Matters Rubric) and the ADDIE model, which outlined the process of creating, implementing, and evaluating quality instructional design products, and are still widely used points of reference in the field.
As mentioned in my prior post, with the emergence of MOOCs came the emergence of a widely used, yet rarely defined role: course developer. Now I must consider another question; how does the course developer role differ from the traditional instructional designer?
[ Full article available at Inside Higher Ed: https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/higher-ed-beta/evolution-role-taking-online-offline ]
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