INSTRUCTIONAL  DESIGN at NJIT

Overview

The New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) is a polytechnic university located in Newark, NJ.  The university offers undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral programs in the sciences, engineering, technology, and business management.

Designing courses is a collaborative effort between the instructional designer (ID) and the faculty member. Use of the Universal Design Template and the QA in eLearning Rubric is facilitated by the ID during the design process to ensure that the final iteration of the course meets design standards before publication in the LMS.

Responsibilities

In addition to course design and collaboration, pedagogical and technical support was provided throughout the term for fully asynchronous online courses. The support provided included (but was not limited to):

• An initial and ongoing needs analysis

• Continued facilitation with implementing the Universal Design Template and the QA in eLearning Rubric

• Ongoing consultation on best practices in online teaching

• Transitioning a face-to-face course into an online course

• Training on a myriad of instructional technologies

• Technical development of learning objects in the learning management system (LMS) such as exams, lecture recordings, assignments, etc. (content is authored by the faculty member and treated as the faculty member's intellectual property, the ID may assist with placing the content directly into the LMS)

• During the COVID-19 pandemic, the scope and responsibilities of the ID expanded to include pedagogical and technical support for emergency remote teaching during the Spring 2020 semester

• Support continued into the Summer 2020, Fall 2020, and Spring 2021 semesters with support for synchronous online and converged learning instructional delivery modes in addition to the usual support for asynchronous online courses

Completed Projects

Transition to Canvas LMS (Sept. 2019 - Sept. 2020)

• Completed transition of learning management systems (transition from Moodle to Canvas) 

• Participated in team effort migrating over 400 courses from Moodle to Canvas

• Trained faculty on the new system by providing 1-on-1 and group training+consultation as required

Pilot of Canvas LMS (Sept. 2018 - Sept. 2019)

• Led and completed pilot of new LMS (Canvas) with 11 faculty members who participated in the pilot

• Provided direct technical support to pilot faculty

• Conducted research on System Usability Scale (SUS) scores for Canvas, adoption rate for Canvas across U.S. R1 institutions, and market research on Canvas comparing market share to other LMS

• Interviewed and surveyed pilot faculty as well as pilot students to collect feedback on the LMS (Likert Scale).

Development of Self-Paced Tutorials for Faculty and Staff on Canvas LMS (Sept. 2019)

• Created the initial tutorials when Canvas went live during the Fall 2019 semester

• Both tutorials are active courses in Canvas that continue to evolve as team members add new content and refine the existing content

Institute for Teaching Excellence (ITE) Workshop - Presentation on Universal Design in Learning (UDL) (Jan. 2019):  

• One of my flagship presentations during the ITE Workshops was on Universal Design in Learning (UDL). The presentation defined and discussed accessibility, universal design, why UDL is important and how it adds value, and how faculty can apply accessibility and UDL best practices to their online courses.

Tools

Faculty use a myriad of instructional tools and technologies, which instructional designers and technologists provide full or limited support for:

• Canvas LMS

• Cisco Webex

• Webex Teams

• Webex LMS Education Connector

• Google Apps (Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drive, Draw, Jamboard)

• Google Classroom

• Harmonize (Pilot only)

• Kaltura

• Big Blue Button (Conferences Tool)

• Cengage

• Follett

• McGraw-Hill Connect

• My Open Math

• Pearson MyLab & Mastery

• Respondus Lockdown Browser and Monitor

• ProctorU Live+ & Record+

• Piazza

• WIRIS MathType

• WIRIS Quizzes

• Vocareum

• VoiceThread