Project Summary: Online Master of Public Health
Managed the design, development, and implementation of a Master of Public Health at the University of San Francisco. The program consists of 480 instructional hours across 15 courses.
Highlights
- Managed the development of a two-year masters level programs
- Introduced highly collaborative group-based (online) learning
- Managed the production of quality course and module introductory videos
- Introduced peer mentorship to engage student attention and enhance performance
- Developed interactive presentations in Captivate
- Developed eBooks to provide students with engaging copy
- Led the effort to incorporate a branded look and feel
Roles Fulfilled
Lead Instructional Designer
As the lead instructional designer for this program, I managed the ongoing development of courses over a two year period. I developed 9 courses, each consisting of 32 instructional hours per course, totaling 288 instructional hours for the entire program.
As the lead instructional designer, I helped instructors to visualize and design an online learning experience that improved their instructional activities and streamlined their facilitation and grading process. I coached them through the process of ideating solutions for online delivery and improved student engagement.
Project Manager and Team Supervisor
As project manager of the program, I maintained development to stay within the project scope. Additionally, I managed the audio-visual producer, the multimedia developer, contractors and student employees who were responsible for various project deliverables.
Videographer
I worked closely with the studio manager to produce high-quality and consistent video-based course material.
Courses Developed
- 611 Introduction to Public Health and Health Promotion
- 612 Biostatistics in Public Health
- 621 Epidemiology
- 622 Communicating for Healthy Behavior and Social Change
- 632 Environment and Occupational Health Issues in Public Health
- 633 Community Based Participation Research
- 635 Social Justice, Health Policy, Ethics, and Public Health Law
- 636 Public Health Program Planning, Management and Evaluation
- 653 Research Methods in Public Health
Captivate Lecture Presentation Sample
The new Master of Public Health program demanded a departure from design that read as “nursing”. In order to provide the program with a content-specific “look and feel”, I led the effort to develop a Captivate template for the Master of Public Health.
Roles
- Project manager
- Design lead
eBook Development
Instructors submitted lecture transcripts to upload into their online course. Although it is possible to place the transcripts in the LMS, they were not downloadable or very interactive. To enhance the reading experience and mobility, I developed the lecture into eBooks using iBooks Author.
Developing the lecture using iBooks Author provided students with the opportunity to interact with the text in an engaging way using annotations, highlighting and note-taking tools.
Roles
- Instructional designer
- eBook designer in iBooks
Peer Mentor Videos
Collaborated with the instructor to produce peer mentor videos. Peer mentoring in an online course is an instructional first at the University of San Francisco.
Roles
- Project manager
- Instructional designer
- Art Director
Case Study: Supporting Online Group Work
Video produced by Mishiara Baker
As the lead instructional designer with SONHP, I worked with Dr. Kelly L’Engle, Assistant Professor in the Population Health Sciences department, to bring her project-based course, Program Planning and Evaluation, online as part of the online Masters of Public Health Program.
During the course of the semester, Dr. L’Engle’s students worked together in groups to complete assignments which built up to an ambitious final project – a proposal for a community healthcare program in response to an urgent need in a particular community of their choice.
In the face-to-face version of the class, students worked intensely with one another to develop and share ideas in class within groups. The challenge in bringing this class online was to create groups that effectively communicated solely through technology.
“It was a pretty major shift to go from in-person, or face-to-face teaching, to online teaching for this class. The class is based on a team learning environment. There are a lot of in-person, face-to-face activities, and it was important to be able to take these group learning, face-to-face opportunities and translate them into the online environment.”
Kelly L’Engle, Professor
Leveraging Educational Technology
Canvas Learning Management System
The integrated group function in Canvas enabled student team members to collaborate and communicate successfully, effectively supporting student-centered learning through peer-to-peer and group interaction. The use of group discussion boards maximized student engagement and called extensively upon students’ critical analysis skills. Dr. L’Engle could see direct evidence of the application of learning gleaned from the discussion boards on students’ individual and group assignments, validating their effectiveness.
Zoom Video Conferencing
Video conferencing also played an important role in enabling group communication and teacher-student interaction. USF’s Zoom Video Conferencing was utilized by groups for video meetings, enabling them to talk and see one another, which supported peer learning and strengthened their group work via social connection. They were able to share information with one another via the Zoom share desktop feature as well as to record their meetings for instructor review. Dr. L’Engle scheduled one-on-one meetings with her students to assess their progress and assist with any problems.
Video
In a group project-based class, peer-to-peer learning is critical to student success. Kelly found that students who had completed the course had valuable advice to impart to new students to help them surmount the challenges of collaborating with a group in an online class. To connect these students and enable this peer learning, Dr. L’Engle asked several experienced former students to record short videos in which they shared with current students their strategies for successfully approaching, organizing and completing their group projects and assignments. These were shared throughout the modules of the course.
In addition, the Instructional Design team completed a three-part video case study on a successful student team from the previous semester. Students could watch these videos and get a real sense of how other students had tackled the challenging final project. The videos detailed one former student group’s process from start to finish, further supporting the current online students as they tackled their group projects in this online version of the class.
This course represents a range of techniques and responses to an instructional challenge. The end result was a productive collaboration, balance of instructor goals and student needs, and the implementation of innovative instructional design, technology and multimedia in service of greater student engagement, support, and success.
“Kelly’s class was project-based, and all group work, so the question was, how do you support group work for online students who have never seen one another, who have never met in person, yet they have to develop a substantial project proposal together? And that was our challenge.”
Xavier Gomez, Senior Instructional Designer