Designing Online Courses for Continuing Education Learners

You can get the title to be shouted outside the door. This is designing online courses for continuing education learners, in case you missed that part. My name is Joe Yankas. I'm one of the instructional designers at Moncler State University. Prior to working at Moncler, I spent a few years at Rutgers University with the division of continuing studies, doing a lot of instructional design work there, and prior to I was at Seaton Hall, so I'm just sort of touring all of the universities in New Jersey, I guess, at this point. It's off to a good start, I guess.

Three down a lot more to go. To give you a little sense of scope about Moncler, who we are, again, we're located in Moncler, New Jersey, which is in Northern New Jersey, just fifteen miles outside of New York City, twenty one thousand seven hundred and eighty four students according to our website last I checked, and about three hundred major minors concentrations and certificate gets, which offers a lot of potential beyond just traditional face to face learning. And I'll get some more of that soon. About the group that I work for. I'm part of a group called ITDS, the instructional technology and design services group.

All in all, we're about twenty or so employees instructional designers, instructional technologists, trainers, and more, multimedia specialists. The whole group is here. Few of them are right here in the front row. They maybe take a picture with them right we started this. So it was like a, like, a family photo right beforehand.

But we support the university at large, through the development of online program courses, but not just that any faculty who need support as well, whether it's just using canvas, whether it's pedagogical questions, course design support, whatever it may be, where the group people come to for that support at the university. We run a lot of different workshops, consultations, and again, just we walk faculty through the entire course design process. So what I wanna talk to you about today, is some of the continuing education initiatives at Montclair State. I arrived at Montclair about two and a half years ago, and it wasn't quite on the radar yet. Least not my understanding of it.

And it started to really pick up over the past year or so, and I'll explain why in just a moment, but I wanna share with you a little bit about the vision of continuing education at Moncler State and the platform we're using for that, spoiler alert, Canvas catalog, and I'll get to that. Our courses assigned process and the steps that we take to facilitate successful partnerships with the faculty that we work with at the university. And then building those Canvas core is for non traditional learners, specific things that we, take into account when designing for those types of learners, some similarity, some differences to designing for our traditional online program courses for undergraduates and graduate students. And then a little bit about what what's next. So again, the vision and the platform, why am I here? Why are we here? And at Moncler State, what is this initiative for continuing education.

I mentioned that it's relatively new. At least my take on it is that it's relatively new. Again, I've been at the university for about two and a half years. And in twenty twenty one, a new president came on board, Jonathan Capell. Prior to that, the former president was very interested building the campus.

So if you, I was chatting with someone who was a student of Moncler in the eighties, the campus looks a lot different than it used to. Again, the former president very interested in building that campus community in a physical way. Our new leader, Jonathan Capell came in again in twenty twenty one, and shared this idea of Moncler unbound. What is Moncler unbound? It's this idea of meeting students where they want to learn. I've been that we're about fifteen miles outside of New York City.

And with that comes a lot of opportunity, right? So you have students coming to the campus, traditional students who might just take some courses, go to the city on the weekends, whatever it may be. But how do we engage those students in a meaningful way with our me to New York. How do we attract nontraditional learners to come to our campus or not? But also find a way to engage with that New York city community. It's this idea of an adaptive landscape, right, meeting learners where they wanna learn, and this really, I think, evolved out of the pandemic and this idea of not just taking an online course, not just taking face to face courses, finding ways to blend the two models. Whenever our president refers to this concept, montclair unbound, because right now it's still just a concept, so just a preface to everything I'm about to share.

This is still relatively new and on folding, but he always mentions low residency programs and things of that nature, things that will drive students to the campus for certain very specific very thought out periods of time where they're coming for a specific reason, and not just, you know, just to sit in the classroom listen to a lecture. So vision versus practice with this concept of Moncler Unbound, creating online self paced courses to offer certificates for now. Eventually, micro credential granting courses. I've attended some really awesome sessions on the idea of of micro credentialing and building those programs and it's something that we inspire for at Montclair. We'll get there one day.

But for right now, we're focused on recruiting different, different group around campus who are interested in this model of developing self paced courses that are online, and kind of break that mold of taking traditional face to face courses. But in practice, what does that look like? Any instructional designers in the room? I assume at least a few do. Okay. I've attracted my own. And so we wanted to take what we were doing and what we were already doing for our online degree programs and just general faculty support.

And we wanted to adapt that into practice for this idea of Moncler Unbound. So what still applies? What were we doing well already that we can bring into this new process for continuing education courses? And what could we change? What could we rethink? What could we remodel? What could we redo? And who was our audience? Right? So I've already mentioned students, those traditional undergraduate graduate students who may come to campus and may find a course that they're interested in. But really, the crux of this are the other groups that you see here, community organizations, business owners, educators, entrepreneurs outside the community. Right? So we wanna build the Moncler State community with new constituents who may have never found us otherwise perhaps, an adult learner who was interested in taking a course on one specific thing and finds it at Moncler. We're starting to use, we're starting to do some internal, work with Canvas catalog as well, and I'll get to that a little bit too.

So it's really coming together for a lot different groups internally, externally, but the main idea being that we're attracting different types of adult learners, people who might not want to go back to school for four years or or a degree for the first time and who are just interested in obtaining these micro credentials. So just to give you a sense of some of the programs that we've worked with so far within Canvas catalog, and I'll talk more about the platform in just a minute. The first one you see here is our most successful group so far, the Ignite Entrepreneurs program. I shouldn't be surprised at the Center entrepreneurship was the most successful in adapting this model of entrepreneurship and, you know, raising alternate forms of revenue that the university is still, I think, getting used to the idea of, but we've been very successful working with this group and have run multiple, multiple, cohorts of this program where student outside community members, business owners, any entrepreneur, anyone with that entrepreneurial spirit will take some, will come to campus for certain things, and then engage with different types of content online. So again, really adopting this idea of Moncler Unbound where you're engaging with certain things online in a meaningful way.

We're using canvas in a very meaningful way and not just it for the sake of hurling files up there, which any instructions behind in the room might shake a little at the idea of, but we're using canvas in a meaningful way, and we're students time on campus in a meaningful way, which I think is really the most important part, bringing people here for a specific reason, for a specific purpose, and not just to sit in a classroom and listen. And then some of these other programs here, I won't get into details on all of them, but have been successful in, again, just bringing in different types of learners into the Moncler ecosystem. And just a few others here. The one I wanna point out on this slide is that last one there. That's actually part of our faculty development program.

So, the ITDS team has developed a series of four courses for our faculty, and we're actually starting to offer those in Canvas catalog now. My hope one day is that we can recruit, other people outside of Moncler State to take some of these courses as well for professional development or faculty development, but Again, right now, we're just using it to, train Moncler State faculty, on all things teaching online. And then there's some other good examples here working with some different in the college of education and elsewhere at the university to, again, just find those stakeholders who are interested in bringing this sort of content into Canvas it into Canvas catalog and meet, again, meet students where they want to learn. Anyone use Canvas catalog actively in the room? Anyone interested in learning about Canvas catalog for the first time? Anyone never heard of him of no clue what it is. That's okay.

All good. So what is Canvas catalog? Canvas catalog is a public facing catalog of courses think of it as a a marketplace that sits on top of Canvas that allows users to come in, whether I'm part of Moncler state or not, browse a list of courses that are available, whether those are free, whether those are for a fee, and enroll and register in those courses, and then be automatically enrolled into a Canvas course site. So I mentioned our faculty development program before. We had a Qualetric survey people would fill it out. We'd have to manually enroll them into the course and whatnot.

Canvas catalog removes all of that and just allows users to enroll, pay if applicable, and then be enrolled right into the course site. So, again, this idea of a public catalog of course listings has a really nice user interface. We've been really impressed so far. Those listings can be either public or private. So there have been some groups we've worked with where they have their own recruitment or interview process for the courses that we're hosting in catalog, so not the best fit for a public facing course because it's not just, open enrollment course.

We do have the ability to hide listings and then say someone goes through this interview process to get accepted into this course, then the the people running the course can send that URL out. So again, public or private listings available. One of the limitations we ran into was that all these catalog entries need to be attached to a canvas course. So if we were running an event or running some sort of face to face thing that wasn't necessarily tied to a canvas course, course. That's one thing I think we're still grappling with on how to deal with is this idea that when you create a catalog entry, you do need to attach it to a canvas course.

And I won't go through all of these bullets, but just to give you an idea of the ideas that you come in, you browse, you pay, and you enroll It does integrate with our point of sale system. Dan in the front's gonna yell at me if I don't get them all right. I think it's touch net, banner, and work day that we use. Okay. So, we, we have those integration set up where we can work with our finance folks to have money out it that comes in through Canvas catalog to the respective departments that that money is supposed to go to.

So that's really nice. Payments accepted by credit card only. There a coupon and discount code functionality, which we've used a number of times for various situations where I've had to generate coupon codes for different use cases, and that's proven to be to be really useful for certain programs. And again, whether you have an NetIDA Moncler state or not, or you're just an external user, you can come in and register for these core is pay and enroll. At Moncler, we did elect to host this in a separate canvas instance, so we've been navigating that a little bit.

But all of our continuing education courses or any courses that are utilizing Canvas catalog are housed in a separate instance away from our primary of Canvas that we use for all of our traditional undergraduate and whatnot courses. And one big difference from a student perspective in accessing Canvas catalog course is that there is a separate student dashboard that students will use to access those courses, and I'll show screenshots of that in a few minutes. So here's what Canvas catalog looks like. This is a very limited view, but just to give you a sense that, again, each course has its own tile. In Canvas catalog that you can click on that, and I'll show you what that looks like in a moment.

But it's this idea of this marketplace that you can just anyone can if you go on your phones right now, moncler dot catalog dot instructure dot com. And you can see our instance of Canvas catalog and all of the courses that were offered ring on there. Again, still very early and very limited in what we're offering right now on there. But this idea of this marketplace, they can come in register for a course, pay, and enroll automatically. So here's what it looks like.

If you click on any of those entry within Canvas catalog. If the course is open for enrollment, you'll see a button at the top that says enroll now. And at the bottom, you can read a course description of what that is. So that gives us full control to, you know, work with the various groups that we're working with on these courses to decide how this course is advertised, what exactly we're sharing about that course, search data data, things like that, we can customize in Canvas catalog as well. And then again, you could just press pay and enroll and go through all the steps of entering new information, credit card information, and all that to enroll into the course.

Once you go through that process and you enroll in the course, I mentioned that that different dashboard, and we're used to seeing a traditional canvas. This is what the student dashboard looks like within Canvas catalog. You see there's a focus on completion, which is kind of different than what we're used to working in traditional undergraduate graduate courses where you filter by completion when you're in progress, whether you've completed the course or whether you have not completed the course, you can filter to see that within the list there. And then that go to course button is a gateway to canvas. So that's going to take you right into the canvas course itself.

You're able to to access that directly from the Canvas catalog interface. Again, just think of catalog as an overlay on top of canvas that handles registration and payment. Once you get into Canvas, it's the same Canvas that you know and love. And then you can also download a PDF transcript as well and export your progress as a learner as well. So this slide pains me because I wish we were at a point where we were issuing micro credentials and badging and we're in conversations with, Canvas credentials for that.

But for now, you can also just issue certificates of completion through Canvas catalog as well. Those can be automatically generated, or you can just issue them. And again, hopefully one day we'll get to a point where we're able to issue micro credentials. So before I get to the rest of this talk, which is more so focused on the course design process itself, I do wanna pause. Are there any questions specifically about Canvas catalog that I can answer, functionality wise, or yes? Questions.

But, the first one is if it's just the fee, it's not tuition lease. So it doesn't matter where that person is, anywhere in the country, so there's not, you know, conventional errors in state tuition or state. That doesn't apply to this Right. So at programs we've worked with, usually do kind of like a market assessment to see what similar programs are charging for similar of courses. The conversation never revolves around location, locale, state, or out of state tuition.

It's more so just a a set fee for particular course based on the what what we determine to be the market value of it. Alright. And the second thing is when they register for the Canvas catalog course, m a r basically put through to Montclair State. Are they officially one of their state's students? And is there a registration process No. So I don't know what the proper terminology would be for that, but I would consider them more so as visitors to the university in a sense.

They're they're not provided with a net ID not provided with any of those typical things that Moncler students are provided with upon enrollment. So kind of like a visiting student sort of a thing is the category I would place men. Yes. So since it's in a separate Canvas instance, so that's something we've had to navigate with that ignite program, I spoke about, because a lot of those it's a mix of community members and clear state students. So we just have to sort of train them on the idea that this is a separate campus instance that they will access the course through.

They're not gonna see all their other courses here. We do have a color distinction in the global navbar to try to help with that a little bit, but people do still Yeah. Yeah. So it's bubbly. Yeah.

We do have a, you know, students, so she's the idea of sort of massaging this idea of accessing the the, of course in a different space than they're used to. So there are two separate two separate instances. Yeah. Yes. You mentioned all catalogs and create must be a technical canvas course.

Does it also go the other way where all canvas courses in the instance are automatically on the catalog or can you exclude No. So you can just, as an admin, in that Canvas instance, I can go in and create a course. For example, for those faculty development courses I was talking I I've created just like template sandbox sites for our other instructional designers to start accessing it through. That's not creating a catalog in before that. So it goes one way but not the other.

Any other catalog specific question? Yep. It's hard to say because, you know, I haven't had a use case like that yet. Maybe I mean, I guess it really depends on what mode of access. You know, we're trying to, I guess, get them used to this idea of accessing the courses through catalog through that dash board, but that's not to stop them from bookmarking the, the catalog instance of Canvas, and then just signing in through there to access the content. So it's really about, I guess, how we're painting that certain narrative of what we want the process to be.

So we've had to produce some documentation related, you know, for the student perspective of how to access your course and whatnot. So in that, we drive them to catalog to get to the course. No. You still can. I mean, if you if you bookmark the this, if you bookmark the Canvas instance itself, and then you just when you get there, you get to a login screen, then you could just sign in and and still get to the traditional Canvas dashboard just in that separate canvas instance, if that makes sense.

Talk to me after multiple. Yes. I was gonna say my institution where the catalog is part of the vein. It's to me still and all of it. They just it's flying on me in my home.

Yeah. Yeah. Just a different URL, but the same sign in process that they would sign into the primary instance with. It's just a matter of, again, how we how we produce the documentation training them how to get into it, you know, do we direct them to the catalog itself to get to the dashboard, or do we direct them directly to Canvas? So, again, still things we're we're working out. I think our I mean, that I can only speak for the courses we've done so far, but but who's to say? Yes.

What was the reasoning behind Good question. Dan Strathaus in the front row. Can I pass that to you? It was the idea was if and when the the initiative were to move administrative units. So that bubble catalog could be presented to a school of continuing education that doesn't exist yet. So keeping academic, traditional matriculated students separate from and those courses, those integrations, and opto, zoom, all that stuff separate from this part.

Mhmm. And again, I mentioned some of our HR training is starting to take place there as well. So learning and development. We have a really great, learning manager who just came on about six months ago, maybe a year ago, and she's been putting some content in there as well. So it's not necessarily just and only for this external facing audience, which is a big piece of it, but we're also gonna be using it for for some internal stuff as well.

Yes. Pain points. Looked looked, three seats to your right. He's, he's, closely involved in that. Yeah.

Yeah. Smooth sailing. It has been smooth sailing, actually. I I I will say over. I mean, at least from my perspective as, instructional designer in in that part of the process, It's been smooth sailing, at least from my perspective.

So any other catalog specific questions I can answer at the end, but I just wanted to, move on to part two, our course design process. So what do we have to do as instructional designers to facilitate a partnership, with these constituents that were working with on these courses. For the IDs in the room who raised their hand a few minutes ago, nothing on this slide will probably look very familiar. I will very surprising to you. The idea of subject matter experts collaborating with an instructional designer to wind up with a completed course design.

And the only difference I'll say working with, continuing education courses, and I noticed this during my time at Rutgers is collaborating with industry experts instead of faculty often. So for continuing ed courses, you're often working with industry leaders and professionals and less so sometimes faculty, but less so faculty. It's sometimes a different relationship. Right? It's different than working with faculty who we all know and love, right, always. But so there there are differences in the process.

Right? So I'll say that's the the biggest difference I noticed on working on continuing education courses over just your traditional credit bearing courses was the collaboration between industry professionals versus just traditional university faculty. But the idea here is that subject matter experts, whether they're faculty, whether they are industry leaders or whatever they may be. They're bringing in their expertise and their content. Right? And their job is to bring in what they're observing in the industry, in field. Their job is to provide curriculum insight.

Their job is to, again, provide that on the ground experience of the success and challenges industry, the things that I don't know, right? I'm not, in marketing, but not in in business. So that's what subject matter experts and faculty are bringing to the process I, we, as the instructional designers, are bringing those best practices, right, that come with the course design process. So some buzzwords, UDL, quality us. Right? Things that we've probably heard multiple times throughout the past two days. But these are real things and real important things that we bring to the course design process to make these learning experience is meaningful.

And I mentioned with the Moncler Unbound initiative, the idea of in person time being meaningful and online time being very meaningful. And I think for the online time to be specifically meaningful, that collaboration with the ID is is really imperative. And we have a lot of good conversations with faculty, or with industry leaders as we're developing and designing these courses. But also just to offer different insight into instructional that are available, right, tools that, again, someone working in the industry might have never heard of. Right? This is our job as as IDs to bring, that tease when it comes to you have this idea of how you wanna execute this assignment.

What can we bring technologically to make that happen in the smoothest way possible? And again, that's really what I think we bring to the process. And then again, at the end, that successful collaboration results in, a completed course design, which leveraging canvas, which is leveraging different tools, if applicable, and hopefully enhanced instructor presence in online courses through multimedia content, which is a different beast in and of itself, which I could probably do a whole other presentation on. So other steps, steps for a successful partnership, keeping the design process transparent, keeping the design process simple. What you're looking at here is actually now an older version of, our course design toolkit. We've actually been having recently to revise this process and this document, and I've been thinking of ways that that will start to apply to continuing ed courses as well.

But the idea being that we collaborate with those faculty or subject matter experts outside of the learning management system at the start of the process. So we're all here because we love Canvas, Right? But time and place, right, if we start throwing canvas at them on day one, then I I think there's a little bit lost to the process in of really focusing on the content itself if we start getting lost in the tools and the technology and the design and the layout and external tools and whatnot. So stepping back and really looking at the process and looking at the content and keeping the process overall as transparent and simple as we can. Backwards design. Again, not necessarily a term that might be new to anyone here, but just focusing on the end goal via back its course design, getting back to the idea of this document, making sure that we are keeping the end goal in mind at the start of the process, and we're designing with that end goal in mind.

So we're starting at the end. We're working our way down to, okay. This is my outcome. How am I going to assess that outcome, how am I going to design activities that help students perform well in that assessment, that help them achieve that outcome. So that's the the idea of backward course design.

Dream big, but stay grounded. This comes from a colleague of mine that I with the rutgers very closely, and we used to collaborate on course design projects together. And her role in the process I'll say was to always she always had the ideas. Right? Dream Big. She was always the dreamer.

What if we did this? What if we did that? What if we had them do this or film here or or come up with this assignment there. Whatever it might be. But then also stay grounded. Right? Being mindful of deadlines, when's that deliverable due? When's that course supposed to launch? So keeping that in mind and having these great is, I think, is great, but also remembering that this is an iterative process. So you might have that grand idea, how do you implement it in a chunked out sort of a way.

Right? Maybe we could take a piece of that for first run of the course, then we can, expand upon that for the next run of the course. So dream big, stay grounded, but just be mindful of deadlines and and whatnot throughout process. Include accessibility in the conversation from the beginning. We are users of Ally, formerly Blackboard Ally, but ethology ally. And, it's so important to include this from the start.

How many of the IDs in the room have your faculty ever side at you, if you came to them last minute and said, oh, those videos, we need to edit those captions, or those images don't have alt text, or we need to reformat the stock and whatnot. So building that into the process from the beginning, they send an image. Hey, do you have a description that you can provide for that image so that I can when I get that to the course. I have that all text at the ready. I don't have to ask them for it at the end of the process because getting in touch with them once the course is done.

Good I don't know about your faculty, but, but again, just weaving that in from the start, include accessibility in the conversation from the beginning, educate your faculty on what that means in terms of what you're going to be asking of them, or your institution, maybe as the ID, you're responsible for some of that. I think it varies from school to school, whether that's the faculty, to to endure that process or for the ID or both, but just make sure you include it at the start of the conversation. This is my favorite one. I always say this, fit the activity to the tool, not the tool to the activity. I think often we get so excited about all the different stuff, all the different integrations, all the different tools.

I mean, there's a whole hall that we've been browsing for two days of showing you all different types of possibilities of what can happen inside of canvas, but fit the activity to tool, not the tool to the activity. And again, what I mean by that is making sure that you're using the tool in a meaningful way. You're not saying, oh, flip video discussions. That sounds really cool. I'm gonna have everyone do that, you know, but think of why you want students to use that tool, and think about learning curve that comes with that tool.

You're putting students through this process of learning how to use flip for the first time or voice thread or hypothesis, and coming across this new technology they haven't used. Is that worth their time? Are you using it once and then abandoning it for the rest of the course? Did you just do it? Cause it looked cool and fun? Or are you doing it because I want students to present on x y z? I think would be more meaningful over flipped than having them do it in a Canvas discussion board. Or I have to have students read this article. I think there's some valuable insight they could offer through social annotation, which hypothesis, which is a great tool. So again, thinking about what you wanna do, how you want your students to do it, and identifying what tool would best execute that particular assignment.

So building canvas courses for traditional learners. What's different? What can we do to be mindful of our adult learners? Right? What can we do to make sure that that person who's coming back to school for the first time in twenty five years and has never looked at a learning management system before, what can we do to make sure that the course is as streamlined as efficiently designed as possible. So in building these modules, and again, this is this is the process that at Moncler, we're rethinking. So I mentioned, how we can adopt our existing processes into this, but also rethink them at the same time. This is something that used, for the design of our online program courses for a long time.

It's called the Ocea model, refers to orientation, content, interaction, and assessment. The idea being that you're providing a framework and a structure to standardize module design in canvas, what we found in using the going through this process with faculty for a long time is that sometimes it can come off as a little rigid. Right? So I think the start of this slide says flexible and navigable, but then I present to you a very rigid standardized process. I sound like a hypocrite. But so we're rethinking this a little bit.

Right? So how can we still achieve some sense of standardization and a sense of making sure that we're checking off all the right boxes that we're doing things the right way. But we're also allowing flexibility in the process, especially as we start to look at these continuing education courses that are different than your traditional course. So if I had to venture a guess in where we'll wind with this process. And again, we're we've been talking about this for a few months. Now, orientation, there always needs to be some sort of framework to kick off a learning module.

Right? Something that sets the stage what's to come for that week. Content, one of the conversations we've been having recently is making sure that the content selected and the content produced is really meaningful. It's done for a specific reason. It's not just I need to record five lecture videos, one, two, three, four, five, or I have to produce a, a module introduction video. Okay.

Make sure I do that. So making sure that the selection and use of content, especially when you're asking faculty to produce it is done in a meaningful way for a specific reason. This concept's really hard for students. I really need to record a video to walk them through it. One of the most, fun facts that that we learned recently from looking at our Panopto analytics, was that some of the most highly viewed videos in opto are assignment instruction videos, videos that are supplementing a particular assignment.

Right? So they're not just, oh, I'm gonna watch video number seven b for the tenth time, probably not. Students are going in. I have to complete this assignment. This video is gonna walk me through it. That video was produced for a specific reason, because that instructor said students struggle with this one.

I'm gonna make sure I produce a video that walks them through how to do certain steps. So our takeaway from that was make sure that the multimedia content that we produce is done for a reason. So I think that's going to factor into that content piece of our process. Interaction recently been been been throwing around the idea of, expanding that to inclusion, just this idea that in each learning module, Students have some opportunity to feel involved in a learning process. Some faculty used to interpret this as, oh, I have to have discussion in every single module and every single week.

And that's where that took us to step back and say, is this too rigid? Do we have to think the way that we approach this process. And then assessment, how are we assessing students in that particular week? Is there an activity, assessment, or activity are we asking them to do to demonstrate mastery of whatever concept. But this Ocea model has been a large part of our course design process for a long time, and it's good that we're rethinking this, especially as we start to get to this idea of inviting continuing education adult learners into, taking courses with us. And this is just a visual of of what that looks like in its former form. Again, I think we'll probably untighten the belt a little on this and make this a little more flexible of a of a process.

But again, maybe for someone who's never taught online before might find this model useful as just, a a launch pad, a starting point to, to get them started in instead of just staring at a blank page in Canvas, saying, okay, okay. Orientation of some sort, what context. So it is a good way to kick off, I think, the design process regardless, but the way in which it's, I don't wanna force, but the way in which we use it, I think, could be a little more flexible. Any design plus users in the room? I love it. I'm gonna collect a commission for anyone who stops by the booth after this talk.

Just kidding. But we all of the IDs at Moncler, we all love, city design plus. Some of the screenshots I'm gonna show you in a minute. We're all produced using using city labs. So they really do make a lot of the design elements in our courses possible.

So what you're looking at here is, the homepage for one of the courses that we launched in Canvas catalog. You might notice one or two things about this. Mainly that the navigation is grossly simplified. That was intentional. Canvas has a nice job of offering many different ways to get different places in Canvas.

But for, again, for the adult learner who's coming to take an online course for the first time, do you wanna see a course navigation bar that long, I would be a little overwhelmed by that personally. So we were thinking of ways to simplify it as much as possible. And you notice that modules is missing for that and I'll show you why in in just a second. But we also wanna make sure that visible support avenues are offered as well. So again, I land I go in Canvas catalog.

I register. I enroll. I pay for the course. I log in for the first time. What do I do? Where do I go? What what what support is available to me? We just wanna make sure that those support avenues are are visible and highlight it within the course homepage itself so that if someone does need support, whether it's program support for the course they're taking, whether it's technical support that we have those support avenues available to them.

I mentioned that modules was missing from course navigation. This is why. So through the help of one of the other instructional designers in our group, where we were actually able to embed the learning modules within the course home page, So this has been really interesting because again, it just creates one streamlined avenue to access everything. I don't need I don't need to know what a module is to get to the course content. I could just pay, get into the course, scroll down a little bit.

And then I have access to my learning materials and my content right there on the course home page. This was really big, in my perspective, again, for those adult learners who might be doing this for the first time and are trying to find your way around canvas. Now there's no need, again, to even know what a module is. You can find all of your content right here. Time completion estimates, adults, we're all very busy.

Right? So when you, again, this idea for the continuing ed courses is provide some sort of time completion estimate where possible. We'll usually work with the faculty or the the person we're designing with on this. And in this particular case, we actually had student support. So we had, someone go in and actually take the course and log the time to help us develop some sort of rough estimate of how long it would take them to get through that particular module. But the justice idea of maybe I'm sitting down after a long day of work and Okay.

I've got two and a half hours or okay. No, I'm gonna wait till tomorrow to do that. So being transparent in our design as well. And then streamline progression. Again, where applicable, it worked well in this case where we wanted to make sure students did x, y, and z before moving on to the second module.

And that's utilizing the prerequisites and requirements feature within the Canvas modules. This is the top of a content page within one of the modules in that course. The only thing I want to point out here is just the use of that navigation bar. Again, possible by made possible by city labs and the design elements within it. You'll also notice that, there's those little circles next to each of the items.

That's referring to the the requirements for that particular module's items. So if I were to finish that, it would, it would give me a check mark. Again, just making sure that as an adult learner, I know what I'm doing, I know how far long I am in the process, we're being as transparent as we can in the design of our courses. And then simple, but the idea of just getting, our learners back to the homepage as necessary. And Also, I mentioned completion tracking, which ties back into that that navbar within the course, to help our learners stay on track and know what exactly they're doing and how far along they are in that process.

So what's next? Looking ahead, within the next, hopefully, short term, I hope it's a short term goal, but in higher ed, we never know. Right? We wanna expand the foot of Canvas catalog, we're trying to bring in different groups of people who might have interest in it. You know, we we see a lot of campus email ask about different courses, different projects, different things, and sometimes I'll see those and say, oh, that might be an interesting, candidate for Canvas catalog and just this idea of trying to bring in more people. This is all, again, very new for us. We don't have a ton of people on the platform yet, but we wanna there.

We want to find different groups, find the right people to talk to, to get the word out and start getting people, to use Canvas catalog and and to start recruiting different types of learners into the university. We want to acquire a badging solution, which again, I was very envious of of the presentations I attended today where some are so far along in having a platform and starting to define those standards and whatnot for issuing micro credentials I hope Moncler can get there soon and that we're able to not just issue certificates, but start issue issuing micro credentials as well. And also thinking about different ways to present the material, right, instead of just your traditional content page, text, readings, videos, multimedia, whatever it may be, thinking about, integrating scorm content, like articulate story line and tools like that, to produce content to deliver different types of modules in a different way. Again, depending on the course and depending on what the use case is for it. Our group's actually going through a story line training next month.

So we're gonna start that process getting us all up to speed. It's been a few years for me, so I I need a refresher too, on on building, and what we can do as IDs to then start offering that as part of the process maybe. Right? So we're meeting with faculty and we say, Oh, that might be a good candidate to have, a little storyline or whatever it may be. So that's something we're hoping to do in the near future. So we've got about four minutes left.

So my email is up there. Yankis j at moncler dot edu. We do have a resource document that we created on how to embed those modules on the, on the course homepage. So if that's something you're interested in, feel free to shoot me an email. I should have had some sort of QR link to it, but I don't.

So flood my inbox, send me an email if you're interested in that. And, I can I can provide that document to you if that's something you're and learning how to do? It's really just an HTML embed on the on the page that makes that possible. But any other questions you may have also, just feel free to reach out and connect. I'm always open to, to conversations. But with the time we have left, three minutes or so, I do wanna ask if there are any questions saying that I can answer.

Yes. So, you mentioned, your certificates now and wanting first global micro credentials. What does that mean to you and your institution? Like, what is financial meaning separate from a certificate? So just the idea of being able to offer, a badge that a learner can put on linkedin. And actually, it not not just a piece of paper I can hang in my cubicle. Right? Like something that I could actually put on my LinkedIn that can drill down to metadata where a recruiter say, oh, not just Joe took this course on designing online courses, but he took this course and, oh, here are the skills he obtained in that.

Here were the outcomes of that or course. Here are, different, you know, whatever it may be. The the metadata piece, I think, is so important, and it makes these credentials so much more meaningful, where the the outcome is stronger. Right? If you're taking a course to get a job or to make yourself appear marketable for a specific skill, having that metadata available through a micro credential and through a badge that you're putting in a portfolio or on your LinkedIn or wherever I think is is super important. Yes.

I have a question about your SMEs. How much? So you're basically giving them a shell and saying, do you populate this with your with your content and by Shell, do you mean that that course design worksheet? I was looking at or you mean canvas itself. Input all of your information or your IDs or your other techs do I would say it depends. So for our fully online degree programs, the ID very closely with the faculty and tends to do the bulk of the the building in Canvas, so they'll use that document to to populate the content. And the ID will take that and make it into something in Canvas.

But for different scenarios, if someone just contacts us for help, we might provide that document, and they might just use as a resource, then go build something themselves. So not one answer. I'd say to that question. Depends on yeah. So I see a lot of your of our self paced, but then I'm discussion.

So are your, as a means that are willing to contact also facilitating discussions? Like, how long are you, are you, you seeing some, like, professional in the field or US, I mean, I guess my my main concern would be they'd be super super gums home in the beginning. I mean, like, yes, I wanna offer this realistic and then because they just kind of peter out towards the end. Like, what is the time commitment and are they? Yeah. I So most of the courses so far have really been facilitated courses. I I don't think we have a great example yet of like a truly fully self paced course where I just come in, I pay.

I have no instructor interaction. I do something and then I leave. Most of them have that facilitation component where someone's monitoring those discussion boards someone, maybe not to the same degree of a a regular credit bearing course, but all the ones I've worked in so I've worked with so far do have someone checking those and making sure that students are just posting and it's going off into the abyss because then then it's not meaningful. Right? They're just they're just contributing and That's it. I guess I saw him.

Yes. So that was I don't know if it was a I don't know if the right word is city labs hack, but my one of my colleagues at other structural designer was able it was, I think, a mix of using city labs, but also just an HTML embed. So to set it up, you just kinda plop some HTML into the a HTML editor, and it will embed the module there. So it's not something that's cleanly and nicely in city labs to just go, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, it's something gotta kinda, like, play with HTML a bit and paste it in. There yes.

I'll start on the left and work my way on. So our faculty requires four No. No. It's more for for our fully online degree programs. It's it's very baked into the process.

So there's, there's a whole kind of roadmap of courses that are gonna launch who the SME is gonna be for those versus the ID assigned to those courses. So for fully online degree programs that our group works closely with, yes. But otherwise, it's it could be the wild, wild west for all we know you know, there's there's no requirement necessarily for if you're teaching online, you have to work with us. It's just if you're working within a fully online degree program that works closely with our department, then you're assigned an ID and you work with us. That probably helps.

Yeah. Definitely help relationship building and whatnot. For sure. Very good. Yep.

Yes. I know that on some of our, self paced cruises that that are offers for free, like, a Minnesota disorder also. There's some issues with the the course abandonment, you know, people started, they they're all going home and they get into it and figure out what this is, you know, work. You know, it's actually because they're of course. Yeah.

And, the the abandoned do you have some mechanism in place that you, you know, gonna keep track of any of that and try and do you? Because I certainly don't. Yeah. No. I think it's a very real issue. And we face it in our faculty development program too, where, you know, we'll get fifteen who sign up for a cohort, but then only, you know, five complete it may And within the first couple weeks of it, we'll try to to reach out and maybe touch base and say, Hey, the course started.

Can, you know, but I I would say it's a case by case cases. There's no, like, one answer. In our case, because we're IDs, we're very aware and invested. We try to outreach in our cases, but for another course, maybe not, you know, certainly something we try to promote this idea of if you notice someone's had zero activity reaching out in some way. Yep. Other are we at time? Oh, we're two minutes over. I'm so sorry.