Designing courses that engage all students requires drawing on broad expertise in pedagogy, technology, and design to facilitate learners’ growth and success. The UCLA Teaching and Learning Center’s team of instructional designers partners with educators to create courses, eLearning content, and multimedia materials that enhance student learning.
To better understand the relationship between educational theory and multimedia technology, we spoke with Kevin Chan, Associate Instructional Designer at the TLC. He shared his perspective on aligning course content, assessments, and technology with learning objectives, as well as advice for instructors as they design their next class.
What does an instructional designer do? What does a typical day look like?
An instructional designer partners with educators to develop engaging learning experiences that align with how students learn. When working with instructors, I first ask about the biggest challenges they might experience in the classroom, and from there, we design strategies to increase engagement. If they need help making their course more accessible, we work on updating content, or we might create learning objectives to help guide assessment design.
What’s typical about an instructional designer’s day is that it’s anything but typical. One day, I might help an instructor define their learning objectives and overall course goals while aligning their materials. Another day, I could build content inside Bruin Learn, UCLA’s learning management system. I may storyboard out a professor’s video lecture with our media production team and later on facilitate a workshop about delivering meaningful feedback in class. All of these different responsibilities center around supporting instructors as they create better learning experiences for students.
How do instructional designers collaborate with instructors to craft learning experiences?
I consider our relationships with instructors to be partnerships, and I always begin with two questions: what is working in your class, and what isn’t working in your class? Instructors are subject matter experts with vast knowledge of their fields. Meanwhile, instructional designers can provide perspectives on student learning and course design best practices. Together, we can create strategies to improve how students learn their course material.
For example, if an instructor identifies that students are struggling with weekly readings, we might create an activity to help address that challenge. Perhaps there’s a technology, such as a digital annotation tool, that allows students to collaborate on interpreting a complex text and discuss its meaning. Instructional designers can also partner with instructors to create e-learning material for courses. Here, we could take static content and transform it into an interactive experience to engage the class. This might transform the student from a passive consumer to a more active participant in their learning. Across these interventions, we’re working to think more strategically about how students learn.
What are some first steps instructors can take to make their courses more engaging for all students?
The first step instructors should take is to set clear expectations when designing a course or introducing an assignment. That means making it clear to students early on what they’re being asked to do, why the task is important, and how they will be evaluated.
Instructors can also identify opportunities to engage students through active learning activities. To meet certain learning objectives, you might integrate activities such as in-class discussions or an online discussion board to make student participation more dynamic. You might also deploy in-class polling tools like surveys or iClicker to quickly gauge student understanding in real time. These activities could assess achievement better than a quiz or a paper. Active learning activities like these provide plenty of engagement because the students are actually doing things instead of just passively consuming lecture material.
How would you define “educational innovation”?
Educational innovation is often framed as new tools and technology, but I don’t think of it as adopting technology for the sake of using it. Innovation starts with being intentional about how a course is designed. For instance, we might better align learning objectives with course activities, increase opportunities for students to engage with instructional materials, or integrate content into e-learning lessons. AI also offers new tools and technology. To me, the question isn’t so much whether we should use it. It’s whether AI actually promotes better thinking and learning for students.
Educational innovation can also come from improving instructor workflows. For instance, it can involve developing strategies and technology to help instructors provide meaningful feedback to a class of hundreds of students. I think it’s about taking a step back and looking to find impactful ways to better support student learning.
What advice would you share with those interested in becoming instructional designers?
I think you need to be very curious about how people learn and be passionate about creating engaging learning experiences. I also think it’s important to understand that instructional design is not just about tools and technology: it’s about learning how to collaborate with instructors to design courses where students feel empowered and excited to participate.
The turning point for me was a course in my master’s program called the Instructional Design Process. For our final project, we had to design a lesson around something we were really passionate about, and I chose DJing with vinyl. Things like smoothly transitioning one song into the next with two records had become second nature to me, but I had to break that down into separate, simpler learning objectives for this project. When I thought about this whole process, it made me realize that we had to start with basic music theory—counting in 4/4 time or understanding the concept of a measure in music—before working on transitioning between records using a mixer. It was the actual process of learning how to design a course that made me realize that how we teach is just as important as what we teach. That class really turned on a lightbulb for me and set me on the path toward this profession.
Visit the TLC website for more information about our instructional design offerings. Contact us at idmp@teaching.ucla.edu to connect with an instructional designer or to get more information about our services.