Course Development Process
New Course Design: Organization and Planning Process
Steps to be followed by course designers and faculty involved in the development of all CCCOnline courses:
- Review Courses (designer and faculty) – it is recommended that all current sections within a discipline be reviewed, to determine existing content and to maintain consistency and continuity of programs.
- Review publisher / online resources (designer and/or faculty) – locate useful course or supplementary materials that might be included in newly designed courses
- CMS Content Showcases and/or Content Assistant
- Textbook (publisher) resources
- Course ePacks
- Other resources as needed or known
- Initiate Course Development Scope of Work form prior to or soon after steps 1 or 2. (Faculty and/or Program Chair)
- Begin process of obtaining copyright permissions for all images and other proprietary materials to be used. (Designer and faculty - See the Course Development Process form [link] for this and other details and responsibilities.)
- Establish Course-Development Plan (faculty)
- Number of units
- Discussion uses – lesson/unit, student/student, Q & A, etc.
- Publisher resources to use
- Syllabus/preliminary schedule
- Lecture notes/instructor remarks
- Required assignments
- Outcomes (tied to the CCCNS objectives)
- Types of learning activities - address different learning styles
- Defined Assessment Procedures (grading methods)
- Other items as appropriate (e.g., labs)
- Create the course shell, working with faculty and the Instructional Design Coordinator as needed.
- Develop html files in Dreamweaver or Web Weaver EZ to meet CCCOnline Course Design Standards
- Add files and other elements to the course shell
- Use the CCCOnline approved course template to meet the usability and accessibility standards.
- Develop Summer courses in a 10-week format. May use Fall or Spring 10-week shells, if available, as the basis for Summer courses. (There normally is one basic shell per course to be used as the common course shell or “master-course” by all teaching the course, although both 15-week and 10-week shells may also exist. Individuals may modify a master shell somewhat for their own use.)
- Provide course to Program Chair for final approval.
- Present course to teaching faculty, demonstrating the layout and navigation.
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Course Revisions: Philosophy and Process
Course revision due to textbook edition changes and/or change of textbooks is a part of teaching and is included in the contract for teaching a course (see the Roles and Responsibilities document [link]). On the other hand, sometimes faculty are called upon to make substantial changes in a course and it seems more fair to offer some compensation for that, particularly when they are making changes which will be applied in the course shells of many other faculty.
We do have to maintain fiscal responsibility when considering this policy. Keep in mind that we can't spend significant amounts revising low-enrollment courses each year. However, we will spend more to revise and improve courses in which large numbers of students enroll.
Please refer to Textbook-Driven Course Revisions: Process and Compensation, below, for information on the process and payment for revisions needed because of textbook changes.
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Textbook-Driven Course Revision:
Process and Compensation
CCCOnline realizes that textbook revisions are at the whim of the publisher and that these revisions can run the gamut of relatively few course changes to major course rewriting. CCCOnline course-revision policies are as follows:
1. When a course requires a new textbook edition the program chair will determine, in consultation with Matrix II faculty teaching the course, whether the changes necessitated are relatively minor or are substantial.
2. The program chair will then determine whether to assign one particular faculty to make the course changes or to select faculty teaching the course to consortially make the necessary changes.
3. All course revisions, whether completed individually or consortially, will be incorporated into the course master shell to be used by all faculty teaching the course.
4. Minor course revisions will not result in faculty compensation. Substantial course revisions will include faculty compensation for redevelopment. These changes might include, but not be limited to:
a. Major rearrangement of chapters.
b. Addition of large amounts of material covering contemporary topics that results in large imbalances between previous material and new material.
c. Revisions that necessitate modification of tests and quizzes other than adding or deleting a few questions.
d. Major changes to supplementary materials accompanying the text.
5. Compensation for redevelopment ranges from $150 - $500. If the course is redeveloped consortially, all faculty working on the redevelopment will split the monies equally. Redevelopment will be paid as follows:
a. $150 - courses wherein enrollments average less than CCCOnline's average class size and/or wherein publishers make minor revisions to course materials on a yearly basis.
b. $300 - courses wherein revisions are substantial, but able to be completed within 20 hours.
c. $300-500 - courses wherein revisions cannot be completed within 20 hours.
6. Program chair will complete a scope-of-work form with an estimate of completion time for each item within the scope of work.
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