The CSUN Approach to Online Teaching and Learning
The notion that faculty “hand off” their course materials to a team of instructional designers who then develop online programs is archaic. For online programs that work, one does not merely “put a course online.” One crafts a course using the instructional possibilities and options of the digital technologies. CSUN recognizes that being agile and innovative in today’s mercurial educational landscape requires a co-creative approach to developing curricula that considers learning goals and online instructional options together as the program is carefully crafted. Leveraging campus-wide partnerships ensures excellence in student-centered instruction, accessibility from many perspectives, and student services that are as carefully designed and thoughtfully executed as the program itself.
The Crafting of Curriculum
CSUN’s fully online degree programs are designed to serve the working adult – the midcareer professional. The programs offered online are career focused and designed to move students who have not completed the baccalaureate degree to degree completion, and to enable those with a baccalaureate to complete the master’s degree in fields in demand in the California and global economy.
To create CSUN online programs, CSUN faculty, leading practitioners and CSUN’s team of eLearning professionals (instructional designers and technical experts) develop online programs that weave together the best in scholarship in the field in question with an understanding of what professional practice in the field will demand in the decades ahead. This course development process enables CSUN to achieve significant educational outcomes: a solid knowledge of the field, advanced conceptual skills, and refined professional abilities that make CSUN graduates effective practitioners. In addition, CSUN enhances the comprehensive impact of all fully online programs by offering them in the cohort format – in which groups of students move through the program together from beginning to end, creating a strong learning community and allowing each course to build on the last in a very purposeful way. Taking full advantage of the learning community created in each cohort, CSUN faculty, working with the CSUN eLearning team, take advantage of the wider range of options, changing technologies, and digital resources to provide select instructional strategies and create adaptive learning environments designed to enhance student engagement and student achievement.
