Ratio of Instructional designers to faculty/courses at institutions

[Ben_Cohan]

Hey folks, this is tangentially related to Canvas, hope that's ok.  I work at a small medical college with about 50 faculty and 600 students.  I am interested in the ratios at other colleges/universities (of any size) between Instructional Designers (in-house or contracted) and the number of faculty/courses they support?  My goal is to be able to report to our leadership that we need to hire more IDs (or pay the one we have more) if our numbers are off.  Also, a significant number of our courses need a substantial overhaul just to be compliant with accessibility, never mind take advantage of modern LMS and LTI features.  So, this will be a lot of work.  Thanks in advance. 

[bt130]

Hi Ben! 

I have worked at a few different institutions with very different ratios and also different approaches to the usefulness of instructional designers. My previous institution had about 7000 students and a large amount of faculty. Our instructional technology department numbered about 5 which contained folks dedicated to LMS support, course design, classroom technology, etc. My current institution (a School of Medicine) has instructional designers at each department. So, for example, I currently support one department which has 120 students and 12 faculty. Hope this helps! 

[ewalsh6]

I just started working at a small Liberal Arts university. We have a grand total of just over 3000 students. I am only the second ID they have hired. And the other ID isn't even fully focused on ID, but my position is. I have no idea how much my colleague makes, more than me for sure, but they started me in the mid 60s as it's my first ID position.

[kbink]

Hi there.  I work at a large land grant university in supporting one of the smaller colleges.  We have two staff the provide academic tech and instructional design support to about 130 teaching faculty each semester.  It is important that you also know what that support means.  In our college, instructors manage their own course site - meaning they copy them forward and set them up.  We handle some of the more complex courses, but just a few, and we have a short lists of tasks we do at the start of each semester to take repetitive work off the hands of our instructors.  We deal with issues related to software, provide support for a a few small computer fleets, handle a few redesign or other ID projects each semester, and support piloting new software.  We also have a central IT that provides support and keeps all the enterprise systems running.

[TanyaUponAvon]

Hi Ben, 

I currently work at a smallish university in the Midwest, and we have approximately 170 faculty members with just four IDs. (I consider this an untenable number, but I'm not in charge of these things.)

Previously, I worked at a large online university, where there were over 1,000 faculty members (mostly adjunct), and there was an entire course development department that included about 100 members--with the tasks covered by most instructional designers split into different roles (i.e., IDs, developmental editors, project managers, course producers (technical experts), multimedia designers, and managers). Of that roughly 100 members, I'd say the IDs were probably 40-45%. That's a really rough estimate. Oh! And there were always at least 10 ID contractors. So, let's say 55 IDs in total.

I hope that helps!

[DrNufer]

I work for an education system with around 9000 students.  Our instructional design team has 6 or 7 designers, a manager, and a part-time ID.  We also have an accessibility specialist who works closely with the IDs.  More would be better, if possible.  

[chriscas]

Hi @Ben_Cohan,

I work at a public university with around 9,000 students and 600 faculty, offering approximately 1300 course sections per semester.  We have 3 full-time instructional designers and 1 manager overseeing them.  We did have one additional instructional designer for the past few years which was funded by COVID relief, but when that funding expired the position was not continued).  They do all of the pedagogical support for all courses.  We also have the Digital Education "team", which is comprised of 6 people, and provides all of the LMS tech support, video support, etc...  Some of the members of this team are central which others work in specific colleges and have many other duties in addition to LMS support.

-Chris

[John__Lane]

Hi,

I am at a mid-sized university with about 770 instructors.  We have a professional development department that has 2 instructional designers as titles but has five people in that department which also includes a graphics/media specialist.  

I run a department of 17 staff members that includes 7 instructional technologists and trainers who support Canvas directly.  The rest of my departments support the instructors in other ways (video/lecture capture and classroom/events support) but they have other duties, as well.

~JL

[Seema949]

Hello IDs - It's really interesting to see these varying numbers and ratios.  As a couple of people mentioned, the roles of instructional designers seem to vary quite a bit too.  I work at a small private college with around 4,000 students, 90 full time faculty, and many adjuncts.  Our team consists of 3 instructional designers and one LMS administrator.  The four of us provide most faculty support and LMS assistance, develop faculty training, and design & build new courses.  We recently added a full time position for a videographer who helps with filming and editing lectures, so that's a huge help.  We would love to have a full time accessibility specialist, but so far that seems unlikely.