The Power of Collaboration Between a SME and Instructional Designer
How One SME Improved Classroom Engagement By Working with an Instructional Designer
Background
In Spring 2024, SOWK 3120: Diversity and Populations at Risk was developed with the Digital Learning Production Team at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. The goal of the process was to create and improve courses for our fully online Bachelor of Social Work, B.S.W. program.
The Process
Using our course development process, faculty member, Matthew Mills, and instructional designer, Blair Stamper, spent 15 weeks transforming an existing face-to-face version of the course into an engaging, reflective, and interactive online version. In this process, they spent the first six weeks determining the types of instructional materials and assignments that would be incorporated into the course to ensure students learned the material intended and were supported by their instructor. During initial conversations, they discovered many assigned course readings were not aligned with the topics being taught each week. Additionally, students only had an opportunity to submit assignments for feedback six weeks throughout the 16-week semester. Working together, they analyzed the assigned textbook readings and found pages and chapters that directly aligned with each week’s topic. Matthew also recorded overview videos for each week helping to explain the topic and make connections between what students had already learned and what they were going to learn. They also integrated weekly reflection-based assignments called “thinking journals.” These journals prompted students to activate their prior knowledge, take notes, and reflect on what they had learned that week. Finally, they created a scaffolded advocacy project that students worked on throughout the semester leading to a plan focused on an at-risk population advocating for social change. The project was broken down into parts allowing for multiple opportunities for feedback throughout the semester.
The Outcomes
After working with an instructional designer, Matthew’s viewpoint of online courses was changed. He has now become an advocate for the process and has started applying many of the lessons learned to his face-to-face courses. When the course was taught for the first time in Fall 2024, Matthew used the course for his face-to-face section as well.
“the course has successfully been able to capture student reflections and processing through assignments outside of class and in class has become a space for accessing and generalized content. I’m using the online template for the in-person classes and our in-class conversations and lectures are more involved than they have been in the past three years.”
Matthew Mills, School of Social Work
