Lesson-2: Case Studies: Instructional Designer
Marsha is a 30-year-old instructional designer at a public college located in an urban area. She wants to develop culturally responsive courses. The CRS methodology is a new concept for her, and she feels overwhelmed by re-developing old courses from scratch and designing new courses.
When she reviewed her CRS© training, she realized the various ways to implement cultural responsiveness. Her first option is to 1) identify courses that hadn’t yet been designed. Her second option is to work with courses in specific content areas. Marsha’s third option is to work with a faculty member who holds CASEPS culturally responsive teaching certification or DEI Officer of Learning Certification. Since this model is new to Marsha and she is looking for support, she selected option 3.
Marsha and her co-worker Luke worked together with Rita, the LODEI, to identify the areas to implement cultural responsiveness. The Department of Institutional Effectiveness results suggested that many of the students require a Tier 3 level of course design at this time. Marsha and her co-workers are up for the challenge. First, they review the comparison of traditional and culturally responsive course design.
Comparison of Culturally Responsive Design
| Categories | Instructional Design | Culturally Responsive Course Design |
| Instructional Model | Bloom’s Taxonomy (1956) Kolb’s (1976) | Culturally Responsive Taxonomy Kolb’s Revised |
| Learning Styles | Kinesthetic, Visual, | Familiarity with culture, academic, ethnic, and collaborative. |
| Model of Objectives | Independent Learning Goals Competency-Based Learning Goals | Collaborative, Interdepend, and Altruistic Learning Goals |
| Content | Discuss, explore, explain. | Revisit the past, and link learning to specific cultural relevancy and responsiveness. |
| Academic Assessment | Multiple choice and written assignment. | Group presentations, collective assessment, and oral examination (live or recorded). Cultural lens approach to assessment (Hardin et al., 2014; Trandias, 1996) |
| Agency | Increase agency through skills building. | Increase agency through lived experiences and cultural relevancy. |
| Deliverables | Options based on learning preferences (Bloom’s Taxonomy). | Options based on culturally responsive learning preferences (Campbell-Whatley, 2015). |
| DEI | General statement about DEI. | Embedding DEI throughout the course. |
After their review, they decided to focus on an introductory writing course since the institutional data supports the need for high levels of cultural responsiveness in those courses. Marsha and her team created the following changes to the course to address the lack of cultural responsiveness.
Planning for Course Changes
| Planning | ||
| General Changes to the Course | Current Design | Culturally Responsive Design Changes |
| Course Introduction | Added statement on the importance of culturally responsive teaching. | |
| Assessment | Created culturally responsive rubrics that have been developed and added to the course based on student demographics. | |
| DEI | Added a sense of community rubric to the course and added goals and objectives about a sense of community. | |
| Agency | Changed language from student to academic stakeholders. | |