Frequently Asked Questions about Course Design

The IDMP Studio has adopted a longer course development cycle at 14-weeks (typical course development cycles at other institutions are 8-weeks to 12-weeks). Make sure to dedicate eight to twelve hours a week to the creation of course elements during the course development cycle.

The amount of time will vary weekly based on the course elements being produced and your knowledge and experience with the course development process. Also, see the IDMPS Service Agreement for more information on workload for subject matter experts.

This would be based on the number of credit hours awarded for your online asynchronous course.

For example, a 4 credit course should have 150 hours total. Please review the Course Types, Modalities, and Activity Times document for more information.

While the nature of an asynchronous course does not permit required synchronous meetings, you can include optional synchronous meetings (e.g., office hours). Keep in mind that many students enroll in asynchronous courses because of the flexibility they offer.

Providing a single synchronous meeting at a fixed time each week may unfairly exclude students with scheduling conflicts. If you find synchronous meetings to be an important part of your instruction, you may consider offering multiple meetings at different times or scheduling individual meetings with students at mutually convenient times.

During the course development cycle, you will develop all the assessments for the course site.

However, as the instructor you can adapt assessments based on student performance when the course is running.

Yes, the instructional design team will provide guidance and suggestions to promote student performance and outcomes.

That includes research-based practices for ensuring diversity, equity, & inclusion (DEI), and the accessibility of course elements such as Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

Activity time refers to the estimated amount of time it will take students to complete a specific learning task or activity in your course. Activity times are used during the course design process to ensure that online asynchronous courses have the same high-quality and rigor as on-campus courses.

And activity times are communicated to students in online asynchronous courses to help students manage their time and the course workload.

The instructional design team utilizes a set of guidelines established by UIC for credit hour equivalency and best practices for calculating activity times.

Please review the following document for more guidance on Course Types, Modalities, and Activity Times.

Yes. Federal guidelines require that course materials are accessible to all students. Retro-fitting, recreating, or editing inaccessible materials to meet accessibility guidelines is costly and time consuming.

To ensure as many current and future students as possible have equitable access to course materials, it is best to remove barriers to learning for all students and apply principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) during the course design process.

Third party materials can be used as supplementary instances in your lectures, and must include permission and a citation.

However, the expectation is for faculty to create original content for the majority of their course elements. Please review the IDMPS Service Agreement for more information.

You will need to confirm with your college dean or department head on this. Most likely, additional instructors will teach the course in the future.

Please review the FAQs on Course and Course Material Development Agreement.

Yes. Please review the FAQs on Course and Course Material Development Agreement.