Story of the Studio

You may be curious to know more about the Studio and what we have been up to during our first year. Below we share the beginnings of our Studio, accomplishment highlights, and details about our director.

Our Aims

We provide a space for UIC instructors to bring a creative and digital mindset to innovate in their teaching; to iteratively find a better way to accomplish student success. At the program level, we are the production unit for the design of courses for new online degree programs in close collaboration with UIC faculty, the colleges, and Extended Campus. In addition to online course creation, faculty can innovate their work through work with our instructional designers and media specialists to enhance work through expanding programming that includes technology enhancements, grant research collaborations, and pilot programs.

Studio Beginnings

The Instructional Design and Media Production Studio was envisioned as early as 2021 by UIC leaders to support instructional innovation across colleges and programs. Our non-academic unit resides within the Office of the Vice Provost of Faculty Affairs.

Exciting plans are underway for construction of a studio space at 1240 W. Harrison St., near the Learning Sciences Research Institute and Innovation Center. The location is conveniently situated at a mid-point between the East and West sides of campus. This expanded studio will offer two flexible recording spaces to support faculty in recording demonstrations, lectures, and podcasts. Our team can support on-location filming as well.

Additionally, the studio engages with the Center for the Advancement of Teaching Excellence (CATE) and other campus partners to create learning assets and support professional development and student success initiatives. We also partner with Learning Technology Solutions (LTS) to build capacity for digital innovation, in alignment with campus technology infrastructure and educational technology initiatives.

Over the past year our staff have grown and our capabilities have expanded.. We began with a group of instructional designers and video producers who rapidly put their expertise to work in the development of online courses. We established a mission and core values as well as strategic priorities. As a result we hired graphic designers to provide visual enhancements for learning, such as data visualizations and illustrations of complex concepts and processes. We have also expanded our skillset to create interactive media for learning and digital accessibility solutions remediated PDFs and closed captioning text.

We also have grown in our mission principle of caring to ensure team success. We believe a team mindset is key to our internal effectiveness and in our approach to working with faculty and other colleagues at UIC. Over the last year we have grown internal trust through working on partnerships through monthly professional development sessions between our instructional design team and our media production team. This work is necessary because initiatives like creating online courses are an incredibly complex process. The complexities challenge our values like ensuring student success, saving faculty time, and producing high quality results. We are proud of the methods we have established together to manage complexities efficiently and to provide faculty with premium services.

Accomplishment Highlights

Since our inception over a year ago, the studio team has been actively engaged in creating teaching and learning solutions for student success. Some of our past and ongoing accomplishments include:

• Developed 12 completed courses for the Colleges of Business Administration and Public Administration.
• Creating 20 courses in various stages of course development for the Colleges of Business Administration, Public Administration, and Liberal Arts and Sciences.
• Facilitated 11 workshops for over 158 participants from every UIC college, on topics such as Creating Inclusive Course Materials, Authentic Assessments, AI for Teaching and Learning, Backward Design, and Equitable Grading & Assessments.
• Consulted with instructors from every college at UIC; 159 instructional design consultations and 12 media consultations.
• Produced media; 207 course videos and 44 interactive media modules.
• Developed 2 resources for designing, teaching and learning for online courses
• Published The Studio Blog with 6 informative posts.

Further, our staff members have presented their expertise and represented UIC at several external conferences, including

• Patrick Horton, Instructional Designer, and Erin Stapleton-Corcoran, Quality Assurance Manager, have presented their design workshop, “Leveraging Design Thinking for Educational Innovation in the Age of Generative AI” at the Lincoln Legacy Conference.
• Maxine Frendel, Instructional Designer, facilitated her workshop,”Fostering Meaningful Conversations and Critical Thinking Using Online Discussions” at the TEACHx Conference.
• Nicole Messier, Associate Director of Instructional Design, has facilitated workshops, “Equitable Grading Strategies” and “Designing Equitable Assessments & Grading Practices” respectively at the Peralta Equity Conference and the Instructional Design Professionals Conferences.

About the Director

Chris joined the Studio in 2023. He is responsible for conducting strategic planning, directing initiatives, implementing digital learning projects, and overseeing the delivery of its services. His professional experience of seventeen years has a throughline of enhancing learning opportunities through enhancing digital technologies. His previous roles include serving as a Learning Engineer at Carnegie Mellon University, and as Assistant Dean of Curriculum for an Executive MBA program. He holds a Ph.D. from University of Wisconsin-Madison’s in Curriculum and Instruction where he researched design approaches for interactive media. He also holds a Master of Science degree in Instructional Technology from Utah State University, and a B.A. in Theater and Media Arts from Brigham Young University.

As we continue on into this academic year, we are focused on expanding innovation opportunities for UIC faculty and, as a result, promoting student success. Feel free to share your opinions through our current survey. We hope you connect with us and keep in touch about innovation events, resources and opportunities by bookmarking idmpstudio.uic.edu!