Table 3 Example quotes by thematic categories from the focus group responses
Category | Example Quote | |
|---|---|---|
Impact on Participating Educators | New knowledge and skills participants developed through the CDI (practical and theory) | “… it really helped to highlight your assessments and lining them up with your objectives …” |
Advocating for student-centered learning (articulating, justifying, and advocating for course design decisions) | “… I’ve never had to defend my instructional strategy before and like I was really pushed in that way …” | |
Improving usability (seeing course from student perspective, improving course based on that information) | “… [T] he main thing was having a user-friendly platform for the students, so I benefited very well from the canvas instructions and now, if you look at my pages for the course are very well structured …” | |
Personal development (growth, fulfillment, motivation) | “… this course gave me the courage and the validation..” | |
Impact of the CDI on Other Educators and Courses | Transferability of the course design process (applying what was learned to other courses or sharing the process with other educators) | “… [My goal is] to use this blueprint for other courses that I teach because I find it to be so effective and so helpful in looking at the whole picture …” |
Student experience/outcomes (impact of CDI and new skills on student learning or experiences) | “… I feel like their ability to retain the skills that they learn in my class has improved …” “… some students shared with me that they became better test takers by taking the course …” | |
Recommending CDI for other educators | “… we should all be required to take the course …” “… I think it’s like such a great service for the employees here to become better teachers …” | |
Interacting with others (opportunities for participants to give feedback to their peers in CDI) | “… I was able to interact with faculty from … different schools … it was neat to see the things that they were learning and teaching and the friendships that were developed … they’re trying to become a better teacher and trying to get a little bit of advice on how they can do a better course …” | |
Perception of the Course | Comparison to other faculty development opportunities | “… I got my post-professional OTD and we covered some but not to the depth of what CDI did. I got very surface level information on how to possibly teach and academics …” “… I do have a master’s in education, but even then I learned some things about technology, when I was in that. But I still didn’t learn all the details that I learned …” |
Opportunities for improvement of CDI | “… Maybe you can have in the future, like those who graduate you can have a community of practice …” | |
Barriers to applying course design skills | Human Capital | “… the main thing was just time constraints and having to prioritize other parts of my job …” |
Departmental Resistance | “… I’d say the barriers were more cultural … you know just because that’s not necessarily the practice for the department …” | |
Budget | “… something that I had to think about was budget and because budgets have been tough since COVID and since enrollment is down all over the country …” |