Immediate teaching needs for the new quarter often take center stage after the pilot term ends. This is why right-sizing revision goals is crucial to our process. With realistic revision goals, pilot instructors can make concrete progress with their available hours and time frame: about 10 hours total spread out across the remaining 8 weeks of the term after your pilot. This is a firm deadline so that the Instructional Designer can support all pilot instructors in the project.

Your Instructional Designer will help you to set three priorities for revision based on your self-report, student feedback, and Workforce Advisory Board feedback. These priorities will be specific, actionable, and measurable. They will be ranked in order of importance so that you can complete high-impact revisions first. These priorities will also be achievable within your current work schedule. Together, you and your Instructional Designer will set a benchmark date for your Instructional Designer to review your progress on each priority as well as a date for completion of all revisions.

Usually instructors have the most satisfaction with the revision process when they accept that this revised version of the course will not be perfect, but will show meaningful improvement. Trying to perfect one assignment or one module typically derails holistic progress on the project overall. The bottom of your Course Revision Action Plan document includes a record of notes, feedback, questions, and ideas for the future. These ideas can cycle into future redesigns of your course. For now, we’re focusing on the changes that will have the most impact on future students and educators who use the openly licensed course pack.

Realistic Revision Priorities

Unrealistic revision priorities are often simply too big or too ambitious to achieve in the available revision window. They often mask a bunch of discrete subtasks that take longer than predicted or require lots of collaboration with other people who have their own time constraints. Unrealistic revision priorities have the potential to overload instructors with too much work if not checked against the available revision window.

In contrast, realistic high impact revision priorities not only align with the project’s criteria for success, but can be achieved within the available revision window. Here are a few examples of realistic high impact revision priorities, given the 8-week window for revision:

1. Revise all naming conventions so that they are meaningful and consistent. (This meets our Accessibility criteria for success: Module/page organization is consistent and intuitive.)
2. Add purpose, task, and criteria for success to all major assessment prompts and rubrics. (This meets our Learner Focus criteria for success: Assessment prompts use transparent design for teaching and learning).
3. Add or clarify the grading rationale for assignments and/or the course as a whole. (This meets our Learner Focus criteria for success: Criteria for graded assessments are clear [rubrics, exemplary student work]).
4. Add or revise weekly or unit-level instructor summaries with a few sentences of introductory framing in overview pages. (This meets our Learner Focus criteria for success: Course content includes multiple means of representation [text, images, video, multimedia].
5. Incorporate one new peer–to-peer learning opportunity, for example, student-led discussions or presentations on chapter content. (This meets our Oregon Context and Representation of Diverse Voices criteria for success: Course activities include opportunities for meaningful peer-to-peer interaction and Assessments allow students to integrate their lived experiences with course content).
6. Create new check-in assignments or low-stakes reflections to help assess student growth and troubleshoot course changes. (This meets our Learner Focus criteria for success: Assessments include low-stakes, frequent opportunities for students to test new skills and knowledge.)
7. Incorporate specific content suggestions from student and Workforce Advisory Board feedback into one or two discussion forums, journal assignments, or problem sets. (This meets our Representation of Diverse Voices criteria for success: Assessments allow students to integrate their lived experiences with course content).

Any three of these suggestions could be achieved with about 10 hours of available work time. If you have more time available, or you want to complete additional revision tasks after you complete your top three priorities, your Instructional Designer will help you go for it!

Creating an Instructor Guide

In addition to your three revision priorities, you will draft an Instructor Guide. This is an essential document for your course pack. It allows future educators to understand the course structure and scope, as well as your own pedagogical values as an educator. If you find yourself struggling to start on your other revision priorities, complete this overarching document first to make concrete progress and motivate yourself for the ongoing work. This document includes a short description of the course, a list of course learning outcomes, a summary of the course organization, and your own recommendations for teaching the course effectively.

Revising Your Course Map

Your Course Map is the last document to revise before submitting your course materials to share with an open license. The course map should reflect all changes you made to your assignment structure, sequence, and feedback methods as a result of your revision. Make sure that all naming conventions are consistent throughout this document. It’s okay to add feedback methods or assignment sequences that you may not have had in the actual pilot. The goal of course map revision is to improve the plan so that students and instructors can benefit in future iterations.

Don’t worry about updating chapter links in this document or linking to existing documents within the course map. Your Instructional Designer will update chapter titles, sequence, and necessary links based on the textbook revision work currently underway.

Using Shared Workspace in Google

With your permission, your Instructional Designer will transfer the pilot content that you wish to share with an open license from your institution’s learning management system into your shared Google Drive. Sometimes pilot instructors prefer to make their course revisions directly in their learning management system before their Instructional Designer transfers content into Google Drive. Your Instructional Designer will confirm the most efficient workflow before transferring your content.

Once your content is organized in your shared drive, your Instructional Designer will add the open license of your choice to every document. Your Instructional Designer will also ensure that your shared content is accessible according to WCAG 2.1 AA standards (discussed in the next section).

Licenses and Attributions for Setting Realistic Priorities

“Setting Realistic Priorities” by Open Oregon Educational Resources is licensed under CC BY 4.0.