After many years of successfully offering the National Workshops, the cost and work associated with offering the National Workshop prompted us re-think this form of working with faculty.  In addition to being a major effort on our part, it was costly for participants:  they had to pay for travel and lodging in Chicago, in addition to the Workshop registration fee.

As a result, we have decided NOT to offer the National Workshop any more; instead we are directing interested people to our online course on: “Significant Learning by Design”.

Online Course

In 2015, Dee Fink licensed Linda Jacoby to offer his course through her company, Optimize Learning.  He wrote the content for the course and she put it into a form that works excellently as an online course.  Beginning in 2020, Bridget Arend took over offering the online course as part of Intentional College Teaching.

In this course, participants do essentially what they did at the National Workshop:

• Participants learn about each of the steps involved in Integrated Course Design through short videos and readings.
• They then perform each step, one at a time.
• They get feedback on each portion of their work from peers in a cohort of other participants AND from an experienced Facilitator.
• By the end of the course, they will have completed the 3-column table and begun thinking about the weekly schedule.

The total time spent in the online course is about the same: ~15 hours in the National Workshop; in the online course it averages 18-21 hours.

However the time in the online course is distributed over a period of two weeks.  This allows people more time to think about each of the course design steps they are working on.

The online course has four other major benefits compared to the National Workshop:

• The online course is offered throughout the year.  Hence it is easier to work into one’s schedule.
• The cost of the online course is much less: A total cost of $495 rather than roughly $1,300 for most participants.
• The online course also works really well for educating adjunct professors about important ideas on teaching.
• They can do it during whatever time of day works well for them.

To get more information about the online course or to sign up for it, visit Intentional College Teaching at www.intentionalcollegeteaching.org