Designing Impactful Lectures Microlearning
Project Overview
Audience: New and experienced faculty members at a pharmacy school
Responsibilities: Instructional Design, eLearning Development, team collaboration, visual & graphic design
Tools Used: Articulate Rise, Microsoft Office Suite
Project Background
The Problem
The university’s pharmacy school regularly hires new faculty members, but there hasn’t been a structured Education Department onboarding training for several years. They’ve received logistical information, but not much information about teaching expectations and best practices. The Education and Instructional Design departments decided to collaborate on an onboarding solution.
The Solution
Our two teams planned and created an asynchronous onboarding course for new faculty members in Canvas LMS. We designed it to be a valuable resource for both new and experienced faculty members. It contained ten modules with microlearning courses, activities, or resources on important education topics. Topics included UDL, Backward Design, hybrid teaching, writing high-quality objectives and assessments, and more.
I co-created a microlearning course with a faculty member titled Designing Impactful Lectures. We included sections on Backward Design, fitting your lecture into a course as a guest lecturer, leveraging existing resources, and designing for learners. The course included interactive elements and questions, practice activities, opportunities for reflection, and resources. My colleague provided pharmacy information and resources. I provided educational information and built the course in Articulate Rise.
The microlearning culminated in an activity where learners apply their knowledge by designing and mapping out their own lecture on a given topic; my colleague humorously chose gout as the topic. We provided templates for them to use and encouraged them to use Backward Design and SMART learning objectives. The result was an engaging course that included practical information, interactivity, application of knowledge, and resources for the learner to take with them.
Design Process
We designed this microlearning using the Backward Design and ADDIE models and collaborated in our roles as SME and Instructional Designer. Please see below for our process.
Analysis
Our Education Team, Instructional Design Team, and Project Manager met for a day-long “retreat” to plan the broader onboarding course.
Conducted a Needs Analysis to identify the most important learning needs, what our school values most for teaching, and the best medium for the course
Compiled a list of contributors and existing resources for the onboarding course; divided up the modules among them
Design & Develop
For our smaller microlearning course: Wrote measurable learning objectives, planned the final assessment, and identified core sub-topics/sections
The SME developed pharmacy-related materials and resources to include in the course. I developed educational materials on Backward Design, SMART learning objectives, and active learning.
I developed the course itself in Articulate Rise, testing for usability and accessibility throughout the process.
Implement
Double checked and tested the course for usability and accessibility
Gathered feedback from my team (SME and manager), making adjustments as needed
Published the course in Rise and embedded it into Canvas LMS
Evaluate
Gathered responses and activity/file uploads from faculty in the Articulate Rise course
Looked for strengths, areas for growth, and ways to improve the course in the future
Reflection
This project was rewarding because it was so collaborative! I enjoyed sitting down for a “retreat” with the Education Team to see how we could serve our new faculty members and reflect our core educational values. It was also nice to work closely with a pharmacy faculty member/SME to create a microlearning course. We worked to make the topic of lectures interactive and meaningful. I came away from this experience with a greater appreciation for my team and with more understanding of what it’s like to be a lecturer (or guest lecturer) in a pharmacy school.