A dedicated team of learning designers empower Maryville faculty to reimagine how curriculum can be delivered dynamically and effectively online. Melissa Childers, assistant director, learning design and faculty engagement, has helped develop hundreds of online courses. She shares how Maryville creates online learning experiences that are engaging and meaningful for every student.
Tell us about transforming classes to an online environment.
At the start of an online course development project, faculty will tell me about how they teach when they’re inside a classroom. They’ll explain they don’t like to lecture a lot; instead they like to present an idea and have students work through it. Or they’ll say they like to incorporate role playing to engage students in real-life scenarios. Or they’ll say they like to have hands-on learning in the classroom.
Then the faculty almost always say, “But I know I can’t do that online.” And it throws up a red flag. Because I can show them how they can do those things online. What’s important is the questions the faculty are asking students. Those learning structures are just the catalysts to having conversations. We can replace those catalysts with something else like a common experience students must go through or having them leverage everyday items in their homes. Those new catalysts result in the same conversations.
What does a normal day look like for a learning designer?
Research shows that the way people learn is as unique as their fingerprints. We are ensuring that curriculum is designed from the start to minimize barriers and maximize learning for all students. Faculty create
the content, but learning designers are responsible for developing an ecosystem where students can see material, read material and hear material, and ultimately understand the material.
On any given day, we’re completing tasks like copy editing, graphic design and sourcing imagery. We’re making web content accessible to people with a wide range of abilities, like creating alternative text descriptions for complex graphics or adding captions to videos. We also help identify places where additional resources may be needed.
Some course development projects span several months, while others are much shorter. But online courses are always growing and changing and evolving. So we are always gathering ideas and imagining what’s possible.
Why is partnering with faculty throughout the online teaching and learning process a powerful differentiator for Maryville?
Maryville has such a community of innovation in teaching and learning. There is also a lot of emphasis placed on professional development around teaching and learning, so the faculty have a lot of ideas and inspiration to draw from. When we sit down together and start applying those ideas, it encourages the faculty to reflect on how they teach and how they approach learning for their students. Having those conversations makes doing something new and different more achievable. And a lot of faculty I’ve worked with said they’ve come out of an online course development project and are more aware of their strengths as a teacher. They’ve even started applying what they discovered in the online space into their on-ground classrooms.
Why is it important to use technology to engage students?
Maryville has made investments in state-of-the-art production studios and technologies including virtual reality, a green screen and a Microsoft Surface Hub and Lightboard. We use these technologies to create custom-designed content interactions.
For example, our team worked with Geriann Brandt, MA, director of the criminal justice/criminology program and assistant professor of criminal justice and criminology, to create an impressive investigation experience that utilizes 360-degree camera technology to create a staged crime scene that students can interact with virtually. Our criminology department has also created a “choose your own adventure” experience in which students respond to dispatch and make a series of choices that lead to different outcomes.
An important factor in Maryville’s approach to online learning is that high-tech and high-touch go hand in hand. One way we ensure this high-touch learning environment is through smaller class sizes. Another way is for faculty to establish more social environments including providing multiple ways for students to engage with their peers. Implementing high-touch learning environments is critical for helping students feel more engaged and is one of the most important components of online learning.