2024 – Growing Instructional Design at Cañada
My second year as Cañada’s Instructional Designer has brought a lot of professional growth for me as I settle into the role and learn more about how faculty want to utilize the role, and also growth for our Instructional Technology & Design team.
This year, I wanted to focus on implementing the feedback and comments that I received from faculty as I talked to them about the role of the Instructional Designer in 2023.
🪴I prioritized working on projects to bring faculty updated and complete resources that they could use whenever they needed them, rather than needing a consultation to get questions answered.
🪴I completed multiple POCR Accessibility Reviews and QOTL 1 Consultative Reviews to help to strengthen our course review process and culture here at Cañada, and to bring an Instructional Design perspective to faculty that they can reference as they update their courses on their time.
🪴I continued offering regular workshops in the Faculty Teaching & Learning Center and Lounge and in our training room, 13-337. As a team, we’re revising our newsletter schedule, but we’ve continued sending that out regularly to connect faculty to resources and workshops.
🪴I’ve gotten more into campus service this year by serving on multiple committees, leading the drafting of comprehensive program review and facilitating 2 offerings of QOTL 2.
Thank you for being here and all of your wonderful support!
Projects
Cañada Syllabus Guide
I collaborated with Kiran Malavade, Cañada’s Faculty Equity Coordinator, to put together a Syllabus Guide for Cañada. We wanted the document to cover the general best practices for crafting an inclusive syllabus, the specific components that need to be included in a syllabus, and the steps for making a syllabus accessible. We brought the guide to Academic Senate for feedback and although they chose not to adopt it as an Academic Senate resource, they encouraged us to share it with faculty looking for guidance in crafting an inclusive and equitable syllabus.
Course Cleanup Guide
We are fast approaching our 10 year anniversary of adopting Canvas in our District. With all of those years of Canvas use, I often see faculty struggle to navigate the amount of content that they have in each of their courses that has been copied between semesters. I created the Course Cleanup Guide to walk faculty through the process of cleaning up the content of a course for their own sanity as well as students’ sanity. Please explore the Course Cleanup Guide if you’re interested!
QOTL, the Essentials (QOTL-E)
In the Spring of 2024, we discussed at District DEAC some of the issues we run into with the timing of our QOTL offerings and how we could address these issues. I proposed that we offer a self-paced “pre-QOTL” course that faculty could enroll in at any time when they need preparation for online teaching, but the next QOTL offering won’t start in time.
District DEAC formed a work group to build this course and we began meeting late in the Spring of 2024. We finished up the course, which we’re calling ‘QOTL, the Essentials, or QOTL-E’ in the Fall of 2024. It was a group effort of Instructional Designers, Technologists and DE Coordinators from across the District and we’re excited to launch the course this semester.
I contributed to the course build and I also managed the project and kept us moving forward on the project amidst all of our other work commitments. I was beyond pleased to receive really positive feedback from my fellow Instructional Technology & Design colleagues on how well the project went and I’m proud of the resource we made.
Faculty Support
Facilitating QOTL 2
I facilitated two cohorts of QOTL 2 in the Summer and Fall of 2024. It was great to get back into the swing of things facilitating QOTL and I was happy to see that faculty are still enjoying and learning from the course that we first built in 2021. Across the 2 cohorts, I had almost 30 faculty complete QOTL 2 across all three colleges. Here is some feedback that I received from QOTL 2 participants:
👏 “Thank you so much for your feedback on my Authentic Assessment. This makes this Ed-Venture so much worth it.”
👏 “Thank you for the shout-out! It means a lot to me to hear that you were inspired by some of my ideas. It’s nice to be affirmed like this.”
👏 “Excellent content and training! I truly enjoyed every aspect of the course. It was a great way to combine theory with practical applications. Thank you so much!”
QOTL 1 Consultative Reviews
Without an Instructional Designer, our consultative review process has been inconsistent over the years, so I’ve been excited to be able update how we offer consultative reviews and ensure that everyone who completes QOTL 1 receives a review. I decided to incorporate my Course Boosts form, that I created last year, into the process in order to summarize the findings of the review with the OEI Rubric, so that faculty are able to more quickly identify the actionable results of the review and apply them in their next course update. To the left, you can see an anonymized QOTL 1 Consultative Review which includes the OEI Rubric followed by the Course Boosts Summary.
Peer Online Course Review (POCR) – Accessibility Reviews
I’ve continued to do the Accessibility Reviews for our POCR process. I’ve completed 7 Accessibility Reviews, and we have 3 more in process this Fall. It has been really useful for faculty to receive detailed feedback about what to fix in their courses in regards to accessibility. I’ve learned that a thorough accessibility review along with an accessibility consultation to identify strategies for remediation is the only way to bring existing courses into accessibility alignment. It is a lot of work for the reviewer and the faculty reviewee, but it is what’s needed for accessibility alignment.
Similar to the QOTL 1 Consultative Reviews, I’m working on the best way to present the information for the Section D Accessibility Review because of the level of detail that’s required. I want to present all of the information to the faculty so that they have what they need to work towards accessibility alignment, but I want to sequence the information to help them work through it efficiently. I started adding a Notes Document, like the one to the right at the end of the review where they can find the recommended sequence to fix things and what exactly needs to be fixed. This is a work in progress and I’ll continue to improve it this year.
Consultations
While faculty are continuing to adjust to the concept of an Instructional Design consultation and remember the possibilities for support available to them, I have continued to have regular requests for consultations. The majority are individual consultations, but they come from a variety of divisions, with disciplines including Math, English, Spanish, Early Childhood Development, History and Chemistry. Consultation highlights have included:
🪴 A small group consultation series over the summer with some English faculty interested in learning more about Contract Grading.
🪴 Consultations that resulted from QOTL 2 and POCR participation.
🪴 Participating in conversations around better connecting SLOs to assessment in Canvas, both at the department-level and at the college level.
Workshops
I’ve continued to offer a variety of Flex Day workshops, and I’ve started partnering with our new Instructional Technologist, Lindsey Irizarry, to continue to offer workshops in the Faculty Teaching & Learning Center.
2024 Sessions
- 10/9: How to Put the ACTION in Your Online Course InterACTION – Translating RSI Standards
- 10/9: Canvas Updates – the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
- 10/9: Unpacking the UDL Toolbox – Representation Principle
- 9/18: AI Brainstorm Session
- 8/13: What is Your Creative Hobby?
- 4/18: Instructional Design Q&A
Upcoming Sessions
- November & December FTLCL Sessions
- January Flex – RSI Session on the New ACCJC Rubric
- January Flex – Unpacking the UDL Toolbox – Engagement Principle
Campus Service
DE Program Review
Distance Education was up for comprehensive program review this semester. I put together the initial draft of our report with the help of my Instructional Technology & Design Teammates. Some highlights from program review:
💡 We decided to focus on comparing student success and enrollment data from before the Pandemic to now, 5 years later. This comparison prompted some interesting questions that I think will be great for guiding our work in the next few years.
💡 We got really clear on what resources we need as a program, which are most important, and which we actually have the bandwidth to take on right now.
💡 We discovered opportunities for input from many other groups on campus and we’re looking forward to incorporating their thoughts and experiences in our report.
| 2018-2019 | 2023-2024 | |
| Headcount | 9,036 | 9,643 |
| Enrollment | 25,128 | 24,263 |
| Enrollment By Modality | 2018-2019 | 2023-2024 |
| Face to Face | 68% | 35% |
| Hybrid | 7% | 16% |
| Online | 26% | 38% |
| Synchronous | 0% | 10% |
| Success By Modality | 2018-2019 | 2023-2024 |
| Overall Success | 72% | 72% |
| Face to Face | 74% | 74% |
| Hybrid | 70% | 72% |
| Online | 67% | 71% |
| Synchronous | 71% |
DEAC & Technology Committee
I’ve continued my membership on these committees and my support of their work. We’ve continued updating the committee structures and refreshing their workflows:
- We’ve now been meeting for consolidated, consecutive meeting times and its so far been working well.
- We now have DEAC Bylaws and updated Technology Committee Bylaws.
- We now have an updated 2024-2027 DEAC Strategic Plan and an updated 2024-2027 Technology Strategic Plan.
- Increasing the technology trainings that we offer both on Flex Days and during meeting times.
- Upcoming Projects: Updating the DE Handbook, Updating the Technology Refresh Process, and offering Technology & DE Surveys.
Additional Committees – IPC & Curriculum Committee
I’m also serving on the Instructional Planning Council (IPC) as a Faculty Member-at-large, and on the Curriculum Committee as one of the representatives for the ASLT division. While I’ve served as a member of IPC in the past, I’m new to serving on Curriculum Committee and its been great to learn more about such an important part of faculty work that I didn’t know much about. I’m also doing my best to bring a faculty perspective to IPC, rather than the Instructional Technologist that I used to bring to the committee.
Professional Development
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- This year, I’ve attended numerous webinars and professional development sessions on AI, including the CVC @One Fall 2024 AI Webinar Series.
- Since completing the @One Equitable Grading course last Fall, I’ve continued reading more into equitable grading strategies to meet the demand in this area that I’ve seen in consultation requests.
- I have multiple professional development opportunities planned for my third year as I’ll have better access to PD funds, including:
- Attending the Instructional Design Professionals Conference
- Obtaining my UDL Credentials