New to the Course Redesign Process?

This blog should resonate with anyone in the field of higher education that asks the question… “How can we make learning more effective?” I leave this question purposefully general so that it could mean both helping students become better learners, but how to deliver an experience that is also more cost effective. The National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT) has always promoted the vision that you can do both… improve learning and lower costs!

For an individual faculty member reading about such things, this may seem daunting – but please continue your investigations of the redesign process. Although significant course redesign needs broad participation of a number of individuals at an institution, it’s also true that smaller scale changes are possible and probably desirable as pathfinders for greater change. NCAT and many other groups (such as OLN in Ohio) can help both large and small-scale redesigns off the drawing board.

Larger institutions have faculty development resources or processes to aid course redesign. A hallmark of faculty development is the sharing of “best practices” (tried and tested approaches) – so you should be able to turn to some group locally that can help you get started. Right now, we have many people around Ohio trying great things, so we can learn from each other across institutions as well!

With this idea that exchanging best practices is a powerful method for fostering change, NCAT has organized a consortium of institutions and systems, called the Redesign Alliance. OLN and several Ohio institutions are Redesign Alliance members.