Integrating learner-centered design and user-centered design for meaningful instructor onboarding: Supporting large-scale curricular changes to general education

Supporting instructors through large-scale curricular changes to cross-disciplinary programs such as general education is a complex challenge. In this case-based narrative, we describe how one large R1 university in the Southwest United States developed and implemented an instructor support program...

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Main Authors: Anuj Gupta, Julie Christen, Katelyn M. Southard
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Michigan Publishing Services 2024-11-01
Series:To Improve the Academy
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Online Access:https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/tia/article/id/4276/
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author Anuj Gupta
Julie Christen
Katelyn M. Southard
author_facet Anuj Gupta
Julie Christen
Katelyn M. Southard
author_sort Anuj Gupta
collection DOAJ
description Supporting instructors through large-scale curricular changes to cross-disciplinary programs such as general education is a complex challenge. In this case-based narrative, we describe how one large R1 university in the Southwest United States developed and implemented an instructor support program during a large-scale general education program redesign for a program that had not been substantively revised since 1998. This program typically offers about 500 courses each semester and is taught by roughly 650 instructors. To support the phased rollout of the new program curriculum, we designed and implemented a Quick Start program to support instructors revising courses for the new program, serving over 400 instructors during its first year of implementation. We discuss our integration of learner-centered design principles (McCombs & Whisler, 1997; Weimer, 2013) to guide the development of the Quick Start program and user-centered design principles (Greer & Harris, 2018; Tham, 2022) to create accessible, useful, and context-driven learning content for the instructors. While these frameworks have been integrated in the past to develop learning materials for students (Jones, 2018; Shivers-McNair et al., 2018), our case-based descriptive analysis presents a novel application of this integration for faculty development. We describe how we integrated these principles to design, scale, iterate, and implement instructor onboarding to the new curriculum. Specifically, we offer four guiding pillars: (i) creating an aligned learning experience, (ii) building an instructional community, (iii) foregrounding an asset-based approach, and (iv) creating useful and usable materials to operationalize such an integration of learner-centered and user-centered design approaches for faculty development.
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spelling doaj-art-b13535e915d54182a02cf29a8ed57dbf2025-08-20T03:34:47ZengMichigan Publishing ServicesTo Improve the Academy2334-48222024-11-0143210.3998/tia.4276Integrating learner-centered design and user-centered design for meaningful instructor onboarding: Supporting large-scale curricular changes to general educationAnuj GuptaJulie ChristenKatelyn M. Southard0Office of General Education, University of ArizonaSupporting instructors through large-scale curricular changes to cross-disciplinary programs such as general education is a complex challenge. In this case-based narrative, we describe how one large R1 university in the Southwest United States developed and implemented an instructor support program during a large-scale general education program redesign for a program that had not been substantively revised since 1998. This program typically offers about 500 courses each semester and is taught by roughly 650 instructors. To support the phased rollout of the new program curriculum, we designed and implemented a Quick Start program to support instructors revising courses for the new program, serving over 400 instructors during its first year of implementation. We discuss our integration of learner-centered design principles (McCombs & Whisler, 1997; Weimer, 2013) to guide the development of the Quick Start program and user-centered design principles (Greer & Harris, 2018; Tham, 2022) to create accessible, useful, and context-driven learning content for the instructors. While these frameworks have been integrated in the past to develop learning materials for students (Jones, 2018; Shivers-McNair et al., 2018), our case-based descriptive analysis presents a novel application of this integration for faculty development. We describe how we integrated these principles to design, scale, iterate, and implement instructor onboarding to the new curriculum. Specifically, we offer four guiding pillars: (i) creating an aligned learning experience, (ii) building an instructional community, (iii) foregrounding an asset-based approach, and (iv) creating useful and usable materials to operationalize such an integration of learner-centered and user-centered design approaches for faculty development.https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/tia/article/id/4276/learner-centered designuser-centered designfaculty developmentgeneral education
spellingShingle Anuj Gupta
Julie Christen
Katelyn M. Southard
Integrating learner-centered design and user-centered design for meaningful instructor onboarding: Supporting large-scale curricular changes to general education
To Improve the Academy
learner-centered design
user-centered design
faculty development
general education
title Integrating learner-centered design and user-centered design for meaningful instructor onboarding: Supporting large-scale curricular changes to general education
title_full Integrating learner-centered design and user-centered design for meaningful instructor onboarding: Supporting large-scale curricular changes to general education
title_fullStr Integrating learner-centered design and user-centered design for meaningful instructor onboarding: Supporting large-scale curricular changes to general education
title_full_unstemmed Integrating learner-centered design and user-centered design for meaningful instructor onboarding: Supporting large-scale curricular changes to general education
title_short Integrating learner-centered design and user-centered design for meaningful instructor onboarding: Supporting large-scale curricular changes to general education
title_sort integrating learner centered design and user centered design for meaningful instructor onboarding supporting large scale curricular changes to general education
topic learner-centered design
user-centered design
faculty development
general education
url https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/tia/article/id/4276/
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