Final Thoughts from the Second NCAT Redesign Alliance Conference

We have just completed the third and final day of the Annual NCAT Redesign Alliance Conference in Orlando, Florida. What a great treat to see so many individuals passionate about learning and teaching! It’s also inspiring to hear about the increasing numbers of course redesigns underway or in the planning stages. In my own journey of discovery at this conference, I had already identified some themes emerging at this conference (or “epiphanies” from my perspective). Here are some more!

Technology is a critical enabler of change that extends the learning environment beyond the classroom to more fully engage students. Interestingly, in earlier presentations and publications coming out of NCAT the idea of technology as a major conveyor of learning was revolutionary and at the forefront. At this conference, technology was pervasive but was not overly dominant. Perhaps this reflects the maturation of our thinking about technology and that many attendees are currently delivering or participating in Web-enhanced or online courses.

Many conference sessions revealed the hallmarks of a successful redesign implementation. For redesigns to work, one of the biggest factors for success involves faculty buy-in. Faculty must buy-in to the process by taking ownership of planning, implementing and maintaining a redesigned course. The list of issues that could trip up the process is dominated by concerns, biases or inaccurate assumptions made by faculty. For some faculty this would mean giving up their long-held assumption that their job is to act as a gate keeper by allowing “bright” students to pass to the next level and filtering everyone else out. We seriously need to rethink this position and consider our role as helping as many students as possible to progress through college. How can we help students succeed? The Statistics redesign at OSU, as presented by Dennis Perl at the conference, nicely illustrates how a course can offer new possibilities to match pedagogies with learning styles. What a great example of a course redesign!

Faculty may see redesigns as a danger to department faculty lines, as comparatively inexpensive adjuncts or graduate assistants are favored to deliver redesigned courses. However, successful implementations have allowed cost savings from introductory courses to be reinvested in the staffing of upper level courses. Also, I have not seen a redesigned course that did not have significant and continuing involvement with full time faculty. Faculty also worry about increased class sizes and the attendant increase in workload. Again, the case studies from NCAT indicate that if the models are applied correctly the staffing adjustments and judicial use of technology are meant to more evenly distribute the workload even if students are participating more than traditional courses. Staffing changes associated with course redesigns should be made to leverage and grow faculty as disciplinary experts while off-loading routine tasks to more cost-effective positions.

Although faculty are clearly a vital part of course redesign (in taking ownership of the process), I walk away from the conference with a deeper respect for how encompassing this change process is. Course redesign demands strong and reflective leadership and participation from the many academic, co-curricular and support units. From the library to student information services, changes demand flexibility and collaboration from a wide variety of our campus units – not just the core academic divisions. We have to help these folks understand how to make changes with this new “student-centered” agenda.

I was impressed that one of the most unifying themes of the entire conference was the importance of assessment. As with the first Redesign Alliance Conference in 2007, Peter Ewell (vice president, National Center for Higher Education Management Systems) made a compelling argument for making decisions grounded in research. Faculty should resonate with this notion of research-driven decisions, but they need to see that gathering and analyzing data is critical and not “busy work”. Appropriately targeted assessment can help build momentum for change, can be used to build consensus and can help document successes or areas needing more work.

Luckily the NCAT Redesign Conference Web site has many of the individual presentations from the 2008 conference – so you will find many more useful ideas than I have written about in this blog. You can also see the presentations from the 2007 conference. If you attended the conference and had additional or different perspectives, please chime-in with your thoughts.

We are being called to make significant changes in higher education (see the Spellings Commission Report). My strong impression is that the NCAT redesign models offer a compelling and tested means of making some of these changes happen. The conference demonstrated that redesigning courses (especially high-enrollment introductory courses) can be a powerful means of improving the quality and effectiveness of higher education courses. We see that redesigned courses are improving student retention and promoting academic success while saving money.