Empowering the Course Maker Beyond Templates

Concurrent Session 8

Brief Abstract

We will talk about our journey from using rigid templates to modular blocks to a flexible design system. Our process was led by a human-centered design approach that puts the needs of instructors and students first.

Our goal: to empower all course makers to create cohesive, customizable digital learning experiences at the University of Arizona.

Presenters

Lead Presenter: Jessica Ament, University of Arizona

Co-presenter: Elyssa Naval, University of Arizona

Elyssa Naval is a Senior Web Site Designer/Developer from Digital Learning at the University of Arizona. In her role, she is responsible for developing and managing multiple websites in Drupal. She also creates responsive HTML templates and page layouts that instructors and instructional designers use in the learning management system. In her web projects, she actively looks for ways to improve accessibility and user experience. Naval holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science with a minor in Information Science, Technology, and Arts from the University of Arizona. In her spare time, she loves to sing, listen to music and podcasts, take photos, and travel with family.

Additional Authors

Extended Abstract

The primary goal of Course Maker is to empower course creators to make courses that are impactful, cohesive, and effective for learners. It provides a faster and easier way to create customizable digital learning experiences at the University of Arizona.

A design system typically includes reusable components and guidelines that web developers, visual designers, and creators use in building products and applications. Big companies such as Adobe, Microsoft, Apple, Salesforce, and others use it to keep a cohesive and unified look and feel across their products and applications. We will share our journey of creating a design system called Course Maker for online learning environments that combines the perspectives of web designers, developers, visual designers, students, instructors, and instructional designers.

During our discovery session, we will also showcase the three ways that we empower course makers on our campus to apply reusable building blocks and page layouts to our LMS. We will also have laptops set up to demo the Page Builder tool. The key takeaways of our presentation include the importance of a shared language, working with stakeholders, and taking a human-centered approach to course design.

Because it takes a community to build and support a course.