Best Practices in Course Changes

[jcarter1]

I work in a very small university where we don't have a dedicated Canvas support structure. I am part of a course building department that works with the academic departments to develop courses in Canvas. I'm in search of Best Practices in how this process of changing courses is managed (we don't give teachers admin-level permissions. Course changes must be vetted through our department, which is staffed with experienced PhD's who coordinate course development with faculty but are not part of that faculty). It presents some challenges for managing the requests for changes as we gain experience and receive more data from our students and faculty. Before this job, whatever LMS I used, I was the sole proprietor of all the content and its organization but that's not the case here so any pointers would be greatly appreciated. 

[sommer]

Hi John. I work for a small, self-funded department within a university that does almost exactly what you're trying to do. Though because we are self-funded, we pay the instructors for development and teaching and "own" the courses. We actually run six program out of this office, but for Online Learning we are a team of five: two editors, two designers, and the Associate Director of Online Learning. We manage about 150 classes total, and around 100+ sections of those classes each semester--fall, spring, and summer. Our basic processes go like this:

New Course Development

• Instructor meets first with Director and Associate Director of Online Learning.
• Instructor then meets with Editor/Designer team (the course/instructor will always have the same Editor and Designer; since we have so many classes, it helps to be somewhat familiar with the content).
• Editor/Instructor work out and agree to a timeline of development, which begins approximately six months before the class is to be offered.
• Once the content is ready, it is sent to the Designer for building into the LMS.
• Instructor/Editor/Designer meet again to go over the class and make sure everything is in order; this usually happens right before the semester begins.

Course Roll-over/Update

• Editor sends an email to instructors asking if they intend to make any changes to existing content and whether those changes will be minor or major. This email is sent approximately three months in advance--about two weeks into the spring semester, we send the summer instructors this email.
• Designers begin rolling courses with "no changes" responses and updating dates. Editors begin working with Instructors that have changes and then send to the Designers for implementation.

I think that's about it. I hope this helps!

[jcarter1]

Thanks so much Sommer.

I wonder about approval authority for these changes. Is the Associate Director of Online Learning the final approval authority for these course builds or changes? Is this person considered a member of the faculty? Are respective School Deans involved somehow?

Major curriculum and course changes seem to be fairly straightforward because they are more formal; our accrediting body gives pretty clear guidelines on what needs to be done. However, there is a lower level of course changes such as revising assignments, changing readings, and etc. So I'm wrestling with how that process should work

So what I'm asking after all this is how do you handle approval of minor and major changes?

Thanks.

[sommer]

We do work closely with the academic departments and their Deans. Any Instructor (or “Content Expert”) that develops or teaches with us must be approved by them first. And with that approval, the Instructor then has authority over all changes. Any changes to the course, whether major or minor, will either come from the Instructor or must be approved by him/her before being implemented. But because we own the courses and “brand” them with our name, we do work with them to maintain things like QM standards, accessibility, etc.

From our position in the university, it’s up to the Instructors and Departments to maintain updated content; and changes to things like assignments and readings fall under that. So maybe not so helpful to what you are looking for…