Then, Now and What's Next

Concurrent Session 1
Streamed Session

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Brief Abstract

Since March 2020, many instructional designers who had assisted faculty in designing in-person classes have been required to move to the remote class format. As a result of these changes in the process and class formats, we must now think – what’s next in designing for the classroom?

Presenters

Lead Presenter: Reginald Jackson, Northwestern University

Reginald Jackson is currently at Northwestern University as Director of Teaching Excellence for the Medill School of Journalism Integrated Marketing Communications and Lead Learning Engineer in Teaching & Learning Technologies. He is also a lecturer in the School of Professional Studies IDS Program teaching courses in Instructional Design, Introduction to Learning Theory and Learning Environment Design. While completing his Masters degree in Instructional Design from Roosevelt University, he became a corporate trainer then instructional designer in the banking industry. He then transitioned to higher education as an Academic Technology Analyst at University of Chicago after completing his doctorate in Adult Education. He teaches part-time in Roosevelt University's Training & Development Program.

Co-presenter: Christopher Neary, Northwestern University

Chris Neary serves as the Instructional Design and Technology Consultant for the Master of Science in Higher Education Administration and Policy program at Northwestern University. His varied administrative and teaching experiences in the higher education industry have given him valuable insight on teaching and supporting faculty members and their courses. In past roles he has worked in communications, admissions, academic advising, and even portrait photography! He has been in his current role at Northwestern since January 2019; here he supports faculty, students, and program operations to ensure all feel a sense of community in graduate-level learning. Chris also teaches part-time at North Central College, a liberal arts college in Naperville, IL. Chris earned his doctor of philosophy in education and master's in political science at Iowa State University. His undergraduate degree is in journalism at Michigan State University.

Extended Abstract

Since March 2020, many instructional designers have been required to assist faculty in moving in-person classes to a remote class format due to pandemic safety restrictions. Online remote instruction became necessary, which to many fundamentally shifted their teaching and learning environments. As a result of these transformative changes, we must now think – what’s next?  What do we do now, or more specifically, how must we help faculty and students to move back to the classroom with ease? Instructional designers have to look at what we did before, the change in teaching and learning styles, and what we will do differently to support faculty and students as they go back to what most cannot yet describe as a “new normal”.

Our session will discuss how we worked before, what we have learned during this remote teaching phase and what our faculty and students expect from instructional designers as they go back to the classroom.

We will review and discuss the following instructional design and technology components at the pre-pandemic, initial pandemic, and later pandemic/post-pandemic transition periods:

  • Standard planning timeline for classes
  • Curation and preferred forms of textbooks and asynchronous media
  • Lecture delivery and format
  • The presence and impact of universal design principles, particularly with formative and summative assessments
  • Testing and recommendations of integrated classroom technologies
  • Organization, limitations, and uses of learning space and supplies
  • Course assessment

These questions are important to the discussion and we will invite participants to add to this list and create a shareable list of questions as a takeaway:

  1. What pieces of the remote process should faculty be taking back to the classroom to keep students engaged?
  2. How much of the asynchronous activities are applicable to the new classroom?
  3. Has Zoom become an optimal tool that it also must fit into this new normal?
  4. How exactly must faculty rethink their classes to keep interest for students and for them to “up their teaching game”?
  5. Is it easier to just back to the old way and forget what we learned from the last year?