How to Conduct a Large-Scale Course Redesign Initiative

Use this brief to understand the challenges, strategy, and implementation guidelines for conducting a large-scale course redesign.

Course design and instructor pedagogy have a critical effect on student learning, completion, and equity. Receiving a bad grade in an early assessment can demotivate students, further entrench a fixed mindset, and activate stereotype threat for underrepresented students. This increases their likelihood of stopping out. A study conducted by a faculty member at UNC Chapel Hill found that in her lecture-heavy, introductory biology course 1 in 3 Black students and 1 in 7 Latinx students received a D or F compared to 1 in 14 white students.

These differences in course performance were significantly reduced when she incorporated more active learning techniques into her teaching practice–pointing to the singular impact that instructor pedagogy has on student course outcomes.

Moreover, individual course outcomes can also have long-term ramifications on student success by influencing major switching patterns and increasing time to degree. Despite these student success concerns, it is difficult for institutions to incentivize faculty to change their pedagogical approach and scale course redesign support across campus.

Create a strategy for conducting the redesign

Enlist key stakeholders, including teaching and learning staff and interested faculty, to support rigorous, learning-focused course (re)design. Target the institution’s most challenging curricular “bottlenecks” for course redesign, transitioning away from a traditional lecture-based model toward one that incorporates active learning strategies such as combining web-based content delivery with face-to-face interaction.

Case Study: University of North Carolina Charlotte

CTL Staff Guide Faculty Through a Rigorous, Step-by-Step Course Redesign Process

• Assessment of course needs and goals
• Course redesign planning
•  Course budget planning
•  Faculty pedagogical and technological training
• Course material development and evaluation
• Project management and facilitation
• Course redesign evaluation
• Scholarship of teaching and learning

Read More About UNC’s Process

Explore the return on investment of course design initiatives

UNC Charlotte’s redesign initiatives have successfully improved student outcomes and reduced costs. For example, facing a combination of disappointing success rates and strained capacity, faculty in the physics department proposed redesigning ten sections of four introductory physics courses. In the initial format, each section involved two 75-minute lectures per week delivered by faculty. To incorporate more opportunities for active learning, faculty opted to replace these lecture-driven courses with a hybrid format that combined online and face-to-face teaching.

By developing a blended model which included online content modules, pre- and post-class quizzes, and a teaching assistant-led problem-solving session, faculty reduced the DFW rate by 12 percentage points, expanded the enrollment cap by 45%, and achieve significant cost savings per student. This new model also reduced student anxiety associated with high-stakes midterm and final tests by focusing on periodic mini-examinations throughout the semester. Other disciplines have seen similar results. For example, UNC Charlotte found that by replacing one lecture session with a graduate student-led discussion and adding weekly low-stakes online activities in a redesigned political science course decreased DFW rates by 14 percentage points.

Get the ROI Strategies

Emphasize the faculty role in course redesign

Faculty ownership is essential to the success and longevity of any course redesign initiative. One of the best ways to engage and support faculty is through faculty learning communities (FLC). These cohorts support individual pedagogical exploration while encouraging collective learning through practice and outcomes sharing. Boise State’s Center for Teaching and Learning invited mathematics faculty to participate in a course-based FLC, specifically to restructure Calculus I, a high-DFW critical course at BSU and on most campuses. The redesign effort took place in two phases over the course of about 16 months.

The first phase brought together an “Exploratory FLC,” convening a group of interested calculus instructors to explore and experiment with redesign strategies at both the individual and institutional level. This created greater consensus around effective pedagogy across multiple instructors engaged in redesign efforts. The second phase entailed a “Collective Action FLC,” the goal of which was to implement the redesign. Invitations to this FLC, which was convened in the fall term, were limited to instructors slated to teach calculus in the upcoming spring term. During the first half of this FLC, members set out to determine agreed upon reforms.

Learn About the Faculty Role