John Falkin is an instructional designer tasked with designing an online graduate seminar program to increase enrollment at Rolling Hills University. The current on-campus program is facing declining enrollment. Stakeholders like the program chair and teaching center coordinator support moving online. However, faculty are concerned about the increased workload, lack of technology skills, and changing seminar pedagogy. John must address these issues to design a successful online program that meets objectives of increasing enrollment while supporting faculty needs.

1. Project A
Case Presentation
Maha Alasmi
CIMT 720
Dr. Feng-Qi Lai
Summer 2015

2. Case 10 John Falkin:
Designing an Online
Graduate Seminar

3. Case Overview
John Falkin was an instructional designer at
Rolling Hills University; the University is facing a
problem in maintaining enrollment levels in one of
their graduate programs. The program is sound
but the potential students are highly mobile and
spread all across the country, there were not
enough students who can come to campus to take
the program. If the enrollment did not increase
they will shut down the program. John was invited
to a meeting to see what can be done to make the
program viable by offering it online. John is
attending meetings to help him think of ways to
solve these problems.

4. Case
Objectives
• Design a course that can solve all the issues
and constraints that faces designing an online
graduate seminar.
• Identify a variety of needs
assessment/performance analysis processes
and data collection strategies that affects the
design of an online course.
• Provide a solution system that accommodates
the needs of faculty, staff, and students and
improve the solution to increase the enrollment
in the program.

5. Stakeholders in the Case, Their
Positions, Concerns, and Issues
John Falkin
 Instructional designer at
Rolling Hills University.
 He worked at an
undergraduate level
designing asynchronous
and discussion based
courses. He never
converted a graduate
course or a program to an
online format.

6. Stakeholders in the Case, Their
Positions, Concerns, and Issues
Dr. Jan Fellows
 The Chair of the Graduate Studies program
over the School of Social Work.
 Concerned with the decrease in enrollment
levels.
 Turning the program to an online to increase
enrollment levels.

7. Stakeholders in the Case, Their
Positions, Concerns, and Issues
Roy Barrow
 Teaching and Learning Center Coordinator.
 Invited John Falkin to the meeting.
 Supported the idea of turning the program
online as other programs have higher
enrollment levels when they were taught online.

8. Stakeholders in the Case, Their
Positions, Concerns, and Issues
Faculty Members
from the school of
Social Work, the
faculty taught the
introductory courses
in the program.
• Dr. Patricia Bello
• Dr. Michael Hatty
• Dr. Eliza
Bainsbridge
• Dr. William Sears
• They don’t have enough time to
design or redesign the courses.
• They are concerned about
copyright and intellectual
property issues.
• some lack the use of computer
and technology.
• Their concerns on the seminar
teaching pedagogy.

9. Stakeholders in the Case, Their
Positions, Concerns, and Issues
Frank
• A student in the program who represents the
rest of the students.
• Program is relevant and it is high quality, he
wants it to be online to be accessible to more
students.

10. Stakeholders in the Case, Their
Positions, Concerns, and Issues
Susan
• A friend of John’s who works on the Northern
Plains University as a senior instructional
designer.
• Suggested to use students as a reference, think
of front-end design, and a way to connect
students with faculty.

11. Problems Identified in
the Case
• There are time constraints and issues, professors need to
make front end design less because they have research to
work on, they also don’t have time to design or redesign.
• The lack of use of computers and technology, some professor
consider themselves as computer illiterate.
• Faculty members are concerned about copyright and
intellectual property issues, as resources are updated
constantly.
• Seminar teaching pedagogy differs when it is delivered online,
as they will lose discussions and the seminar methodology.
• John’s constraints as he never developed and designed a
graduate online course what if it was a whole program.
• A gradual decline in the quality of students being admitted.

12. Solutions
• Gather data to see the results of turning the whole program
to an online program.
• Develop a course to prepare faculty to work with
technology and develop their technical strategies for
teaching online courses. Motivating the faculty will help
them to better design and redesign their courses.
• Use students as a reference, see what are their interests
and develop their suggestions to help make the program
better.
• Create a team that helps in developing strategies that will
help improve the program.
• Develop a seminar method pedagogy that could be used
with different types of technology to engage students with
their peers and their professors such as using discussion
forums, wikis, collaborate, Skype, etc.

13. References
• Dick, W., Carey, L., & Carey J.O. (2014). The Systematic
Design of Instruction (8th Ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Pearson.
• Ertmer, P., Quinn, J., & Glazewski, K. (2014). The ID
casebook: Case studies in instructional design (Fourth
ed., pp105-112). Pearson Education.