Reflections from faculty members Annette Miles, PhD, Helen Krauthamer, PhD, and Uzma Amir suggest that designing a learning experience is often mistakenly reduced to a series of tasks rather than a relationship-based practice. The focus tends to be on digitizing content, ensuring accessibility, or aligning rubrics with outcomes, making the process transactional. However, course design should fundamentally be seen as an act of care, which involves meeting individuals where they are with empathy and support, aiming to help others flourish.
Designing with care involves anticipating needs, minimizing obstacles, and creating an environment that supports both faculty and students. When care is prioritized, the design process becomes relational. Designers work alongside faculty, and faculty consider their students’ humanity in their designs. This article explores the role of care in the designer-faculty relationship and its impact on both faculty and student experiences.
At the University of the District of Columbia’s Center for the Advancement of Learning, a team of 3.5 designers supports over 200 faculty members as both builders and coaches. Care is central to their process, serving as a guiding principle in design, collaboration, and support. Faculty often have demanding schedules, making course design seem daunting. In this scenario, care involves reducing their workload and stress through the use of templates for courses, syllabi, and modules, as well as assisting with content refinement, formatting, and accessibility as courses near completion.
Flexible weekly or biweekly sessions provide a non-judgmental space for faculty to reflect on their teaching beyond daily demands. Instructors utilize this time to address design challenges, explore engagement methods, and re-evaluate assessments. Together, they refine assignments, incorporate best practices in pedagogy, and introduce tools that enhance interactive and inclusive learning. These collaborative and creative sessions, grounded in care, lead to improved courses and more confident faculty.
Beyond course design, meetings often include discussions about life outside the university, acknowledging milestones and responsibilities affecting timelines. Empathy involves adjusting expectations as needed. Overstressed and unsupported faculty can quickly lose motivation, so the focus is on faculty first, course design second, celebrating their progress whether it involves completing assessments or meeting certification standards.
Faculty care about course design because they care about their students. As partners, they design for diverse learners, including nontraditional, multilingual, first-generation, dual enrollment, and traditional students. This perspective informs every design decision. They provide guides for various levels of technological fluency, establish consistent course structures to ease cognitive load, and promote flexibility in assignments and deadlines. By anticipating obstacles, they help faculty center care and support students holistically.
When care extends to faculty, it transforms not just the course but also their teaching approach. Design becomes a reflective, evolving practice focused on student success. Prof. Uzma Amir notes that feedback emphasizes learning, accessibility, and clarity, rather than procedural compliance, underscoring that quality course design is a continuous, collaborative effort centered on student success.
Collaboration also fosters care. Work that can feel isolating becomes shared. Dr. Helene Krauthamer highlights the value of collaborative sessions, noting that tasks that would take hours were often completed during meetings, reinforcing the importance of teamwork even in academia. Dr. Annette Miles emphasizes the distribution of care across the team, as their support helped her transition from being apprehensive about online teaching to having multiple courses certified by Quality Matters.
Through collaboration, respect, and sustained support, care strengthens faculty’s ability to design with confidence, clarity, and purpose. When faculty design with care, students benefit in ways that enhance their confidence and engagement. A thoughtful structure, clear guidance, and built-in supports reduce barriers, allowing students to focus on learning. Prof. Amir reports that students appreciated the clear module structure and supports, which reduced stress and fostered a sense of belonging.
Care also influences how students engage with their work and others beyond the course. Dr. Krauthamer observed that students continued their projects after the course, with 40% of a class of 10 showing commitment beyond the course scope. Dr. Miles links these outcomes to students’ future opportunities, emphasizing the impact of instructional choices on students’ job prospects.
Care remains an evolving process as faculty continue to identify areas for improvement, recognizing that supporting students is ongoing. Care is not only immediate but evolves with students, influencing their academic journey and future paths.
Original Source: facultyfocus.com
