A Developmental Framework for Resilient Course Design

During the emergency shift to remote instruction in early 2020, hundreds of instructors on our primarily residential campus were faced with adapting in-person courses to online courses with little or no experiential knowledge of online pedagogy. This situation illuminated aspects of existing instruction that were poorly suited to direct translation into online analogues. Many existing instructional design campus resources provided broad evidence-based principles for effective learning but few pragmatic, logistical, and tactical approaches to rapidly revamp courses for uncertain circumstances. To address this need, a cross-campus team of instructional design experts developed a framework for resilient course design that could be used to (1) quickly assess aspects of the course where additional flexibility could be designed, (2) build flexible course materials that meet learning objectives in any modality, and (3) expand students' options for engagement, representation, and action/expression in learning activities and assignments. This session describes the framework, provides scenarios and examples, and discusses how the framework was introduced on campus.