What kind of support do they need?: an instructional designer's experience in faculty and student support for online courses

ABSTRACT

This paper intends to share two unique Lehigh experiences in designing and offering online courses to two completely different sets of audience. One of the two courses is offered to students around the world via Lehigh's International Program. The development team consists of a faculty member, an Instructional Technology Consultant (IT Consultant), three graduate assistants and other media support staff. We have about a month to develop an online course from scratch.Lehigh University's Clipper Project is designed to develop five Web-based freshman courses and offer them to high school seniors early admitted to Lehigh. Each course is assigned an IT Consultant to help the faculty develop the course. My other project is to work with an English professor to redesign his English course for the Clipper Project. This professor is considered a catalyst on campus for his continuous interest in exploring new and more effective educational technology. This team consists of three members, the professor, an IT Consultant, and a graphic and Web designer. Course redesign takes about one year.Serving as the IT consultant for both of these two teams, I had the opportunities to work with two very different design approaches. One differentiates itself from the other by variables such as the target audience, the discipline, the learning objectives, the instructor's level of comfort with technology, students' technology literacy and accessibility to various technologies, timeline, and many others. Table A presents a quick comparison of these two projects.In most ideal arrangements, the helpdesk is responsible for supporting students' technological needs and IT Consultants for the training and supporting of the faculty. In reality, it is fairly difficult to draw a line between the two in an online environment. Owing to their deep and long-term involvement with all aspects of online courses, IT Consultants are often considered more effective as well as efficient in providing first line support to online students. My experiences echo loud and sound with this perception.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.3 COMPUTERS AND EDUCATION
      K.3.1 Computer Uses in Education
          Subjects: Distance learning

Additional Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.3 COMPUTERS AND EDUCATION
      K.3.1 Computer Uses in Education
          Subjects: Collaborative learning; Computer-managed instruction (CMI); Computer-assisted instruction (CAI)

General Terms:
Design

Keywords:
IT consultant, instructional designer, instructional technologist, online course, online instructional design, online support