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Continuous Improvement

Every course development project is an integral part of the larger, continuous improvement process that is iterative, reflective, personal, and takes place at curricular and institutional contexts.

  • Iterative: to keep the content fresh and relevant, and to reflect the curricular changes driven by the broader ecosystem of stakeholders.
  • Reflective: to use lessons learned from previous iterations or the introduction of new pedagogical approaches or educational technologies to inform the upcoming revision.
  • Personal: to represent the personal values, academic freedom, and teaching philosophy of the faculty.

Academic Technology team invites the faculty member to take the unique opportunity of developing an online course to reflect on the following questions (Hai-Jew, 2010):

Have legal guidelines and relevant policies that might affect the course revision changed?

Copyright and Fair Use
Web Accessibility
Accreditation Standards
Regular and Substantive Interaction (RSI)

What progress or change in the domain field might inform the course revision?

Subject matter area
Interdisciplinary area

What updates in teaching and learning methodologies might be relevant?

Learner-centered approach
Active Learning
Gamification
Social and Collaborative learning

What updates in relevant technologies could improve the course?

Audio/Visual Technologies
Collaboration tools
Mobile Learning

Closing the Loop

There are many different models for software/system development process: Waterfall, ADDIE, RAD, Agile, Lean, Spiral, etc. What’s common among them is the Evaluation phase, in which the development team examines the data and compare it against the initial vision to see what’s working as planned and what’s not. The development team then modify the product to fine-tune the performance of the software and ensure quality control.

Academic Technology, upon request, will help facilitate a post-mortem meeting with the faculty, after the developed course has run at least once, with the purpose of tweaking the course design according to the data.

The ADDIE Model Infographic
ADDIE model

Reference