Page 16 - Campus Technology, March/April 2019

Teaching & learning david raths
3 Keys to Engaging Faculty
in Instructional Design
WITH THE growth in hybrid and online cours- es and the introduction of open educational resources, active learning concepts and new learning spaces, it is an exciting time to be an instructional designer in higher education. More faculty members need help rethinking course activities, materials and assessments.
Yet like campus librarians, instructional designers still struggle at times to raise aware- ness about the variety of services they can offer and to form meaningful partnerships with other stakeholders on campus — in part because some faculty members see them as IT support staff. That misconception gets magnified if the instructional design team resides in the IT department and reports to the CIO (which tends to be the case about half the time, instructional designers say).
“I learned early on in my career not to install printers, because that can be the thing that puts a particular perspective in people’s minds,” said Erin DeSilva, assistant director of Learning Design and Technology at Dart- mouth College (NH). Yet DeSilva and other instructional designers interviewed for this article agreed that helping faculty with their immediate tech issues is a way to get their foot in the door, especially with faculty who aren’t teaching online and so don’t have an impetus to seek out instructional design help.
Most instructional designers will tell you their work begins with getting a foot in the door with faculty and building rapport from there. Here are three ways to make that relationship a success.
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CAMPUS TECHNOLOGY | March/April 2019
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