Initial Snapshot
Rich Brown is an adjunct instructor at NYU’s School of Professional Studies. His nonprofit career spans over 30 years as a fundraiser, manager, and teacher. Based on the needs of the program, Professor Brown was given the task of redesigning his face-to-face Fundraising and Concepts course with a 3 month window, to provide it fully online to a larger audience. He was facing all the unique challenges of teaching online for the first time including teaching students all over the world, students having varying degrees of knowledge to course subject matter, and was working with limited resources.
Recommendations
Professor Brown engaged with The Digital Studio team to discuss various methods of transitioning from a face-to-face to a fully online course. Based on a content analysis and instructional design session, it was recommended that his core lecture content be broken down into smaller segments and defined by learning objectives. Certain objectives that were more dense would have multiple parts to ensure students received depth and context. By connecting course discussions from the video modules to the live sessions, students would be more actively engaged and have opportunities to gain immediate feedback. Taking advantage of the services unique affordances, Professor Brown invited industry guests to record interviews and relate their experience in real life situations to course content.
Outcomes
Professor Brown was able to identify a manageable and effective workflow to transition his course to be fully online. The Digital Studio team provided a framework for him to rethink his content and realign learning outcomes. As a result of this process, the course is now available to students around the world.
Once the content was created (40 instructional video modules) Professor Brown could now focus his efforts on connecting the material to the synchronous elements of the course. Although there was a large investment of time by Professor Brown during the summer of 2014, he has since been able to successfully deliver the course for 6 consecutive semesters with minimal refresh of content. Professor Brown is back this semester engaging with the Digital Studio in building a new online course on Management and Operations. Having a better understanding of the needs of his students in this online environment, he is much more confident in redesigning another course.