Talk to an Instructional Designer

Instructional designers support the development and delivery of effective, engaging, and high-quality educational experiences. They can review and evaluate courses to ensure courses meet quality standards and best practices in instructional design. Instructional designers may be able to help you:

Refine Learning Objectives — Refine learning objectives and align content to match those objectives.
Make Activities Accessible — Develop courses using universal design strategies and modify activities and resources to be accessible.
Design with Intention — Apply instructional design and visual design strategies (ABCs R US: Alignment, Balance, Contrast, Chunking, Repetition, Utility, and Simplicity).
Identify Educational Technologies — Utilize educational technologies, such as Canvas and Microsoft Teams, to elevate the learning process (SAMR: Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition).
Develop Quality Assessments — Review formative and summative assessments to ensure they are accurately measuring student learning objectives and provide the correct feedback to students.
Workshop Ideas - Provide a space to discuss your course goals and ideas. The instructional designer can provide a sounding board and resources to assist in the formation of your course and assignments.

As the subject matter expert and instructor of the course, the faculty member is ultimately responsible for the course's content and delivery. However, instructional designers can help faculty evaluate and critique their course to ensure learning experiences are engaging and effective. In general, faculty members are responsible for:

Developing the course content — The faculty member should determine the course objectives, develop the syllabus, select and create learning materials, and design assessments that measure learning outcomes.
Delivering the course content — The faculty member should deliver lectures, facilitate discussions, provide feedback to students, and grade assignments.
Communicating with students — The faculty member should be available to answer students' questions, provide feedback on assignments, and address any concerns or issues that arise during the course.

If you would like help designing a course, you can schedule an instructional design consultation using the Bookings link (screenshot below).

If you are developing a new course, there are several factors that could impact a timeline for development, such as the complexity of the course, the level of collaboration required, and the availability of resources. However, on average, the course development process can take 3-6 months. Therefore, if you are working with an instructional designer, it's important for faculty to initiate communication with instructional designers early and provide regular updates (every 2 weeks), to ensure that the course development process is collaborative and effective.

Email to Create a Ticket

Faculty members who run into technical issues with instructional tools such as Canvas can email canvas_support@redlands.edu from their secure UofR email address. This will create a ticket and response times can be as quick as 1 business day.

Menu showing where to email canvas support

Book an Appointment

Our Bookings link is also available in Canvas under the U of R Support tab (left-hand menu).

Menu showing where to book a consultation

Teams Messaging

If you would like to ask non-technical questions, rather than use a traditional phone line, the best way to message an instructional designer is through the Microsoft Teams app. That way we have your full contact information and it can reach us whether we are at our desk, remote, or assisting someone in our MakerSpace. We can then, depending on availability, get on a web-call and work through the issue.