Collaborative design, or “co-design”, is a term that has gained popularity in educational research and design communities, including those working with K-12 educators. While more groups are identifying with and pursuing co-design, much remains to be understood about how to structure the work within given different constraints, circumstances, and resources available to different parties. We propose understanding co-design as having inherent asymmetries and that structuring co-design work patterns involves negotiation of those asymmetries. Through a case of an elementary computer science and math integration research-practice partnership, we share ways that those asymmetries are both intentionally softened and leveraged at different times.

Authentic learning experiences such as internships can enhance employability and support the development of interpersonal skills. Arranging internships can be challenging for instructional design and technology (IDT) education programs, involving a need for collaboration with others across disciplinary areas to connect students with real-world instructional design needs and project ideas. This paper offers a design case of a partnership of investigators from multiple disciplines at a large, urban, public university in the southwestern United States that was leveraged to create summer internships for IDT students. Interviews were conducted with participating students six months following the program. There were noted impacts of the internship on their identities as novice IDT professionals, with certain components of the internship structure more directly shaping their IDT skills for working on transdisciplinary team projects.

The purpose of this paper is to review studies which have explored relationship dynamics between instructional designers and faculty in higher education with the intent to identify examples of how instructional designers engage in the six streams of coaching as proposed by Passmore (2007). Upon review of our findings, we offer heuristics to support instructional designers’ abilities to approach their working relationships with faculty through a coaching lens. Recommendations for future research to better understand the implications and barriers a coaching lens may impose will also be discussed.

This paper describes a design case that addressed a healthcare training need for clinicians and administrators about Value-Based Care (VBC) through the design, development, implementation, and evaluation of seven massive open online courses (MOOCs). The context was an industry-academic partnership that linked subject matter experts in VBC with university faculty and designers. Courses were developed using a co-design approach to provide multiple perspectives on the issues involved, ensure the accuracy of the content, and enhance the alignment between the design and stakeholders’ needs. The team worked collaboratively to define the opportunity, brainstorm ideas, prototype solutions, evaluate prototypes based on identified needs, and ultimately design online educational experiences for a wide variety of learners in different healthcare contexts. This paper shares lessons learned about creating stronger design systems for collaboration in the areas of selecting and supporting co-design teams, fostering collaborative learning environments, and modeling collaboration in the instructional design process. Reflections about this design case underscored the importance of forming relationships among team members, which was a key outcome of the co-design structure and, facilitated the communication and psychological safety needed to support the iterative cycles of feedback during course development.

In this paper, we share our process and learnings from growing the Instructional Design Working Group of the Design Justice Network, a group of instructional design professionals interested in understanding and applying critical, ethical, and socially-just approaches to instructional design. Following a brief review of the literature on approaches to ID collaboration and professional growth, and an introduction to the DJN Principles (DJN, 2018) that guided our work, we will weave stories of significant moments that highlight our use of design justice and co-design strategies to intentionally design and grow the community, highlight lessons learned, and reflect on the future.

Although 29 studies of the relationship between instructional designers and faculty in higher education characterized it as collaborative, none defined collaboration (Chen & Carliner, 2021). That’s where this position paper begins, addressing these questions: What is collaboration in an educational services context? and To what extent does “collaboration” effectively characterize the relationship between instructional designers and faculty in a higher education context? This paper starts by defining collaboration in the context of educational support services. Then it describes the services offered by instructional designers in higher education and makes the case, at a conceptual level, that collaboration does not fully characterize the nature of the relationship between most instructional designers and instructors, and suggests, instead, the term "consultative" better characterizes this relationship. Next this paper summarizes evidence from an empirical study of three different instructional design services, which supports the concept. This paper closes by suggesting implications to practice, teaching, and research and theory.

This paper provides a rich description of a participatory research project which employed co-design methods to conduct research with students. This case study offers strategies and tools for other research teams who may consider undertaking a participatory research project which involves co-designing with students, emphasizing lessons learned about recruiting, facilitating, and communicating with stakeholders about the emergent, flexible nature of this work. Findings from the project discussed in the case study are included, and reflections on the overall project design are discussed.

This article describes a collaborative project between instructional designers and faculty members in a California public university. It is based on the idea that faculty possess valuable applied knowledge of how to use technology tools to address instructional needs. The sharing of this knowledge via ‘Faculty Spotlights’ fosters technology adoption on campuses. Additionally, the process of co-creating spotlights helps instructional designers see how and why instructors apply technology to pedagogy. This understanding allows designers to collaborate with additional instructors more effectively. This paper describes processes for creating and promoting faculty spotlights, along with a description of early project impact and faculty feedback. It attempts to live its mission, which is to elevate learning from experience.

As higher education institutions expand online education in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, instructional design/course development (ID/CD) teams, units, centers or departments are becoming more commonplace. How will calls for higher education accountability, coupled with decreasing fiscal resources, affect these teams when “COVID panic” dies down? Principles of institutional effectiveness can be used in the assessment of ID/CD teams to justify the team’s existence, combat the lack of knowledge about instructional designers, and drive continuous improvement. An exploratory study of 76 institutions reveals how and why assessment is currently being done and which metrics should be used to assess ID/CD teams.

We examined collaboration via the discourse of Instructional Designers (IDs) actively engaged in co-design. Discourse is language-in-use within a specific community as opposed to abstract notions of how words might fall together by more general rules of grammar and semantics. An analysis of discourse in a community of practice is a direct observation of the meaning-making process employed by members of that community. We collected and analyzed five audio recordings from Collaborative Project Meetings (CPM) among teams of IDs and clients to determine the types of design expertise that comprised the discourse of collaboration. Several findings from this study shed light on how instructional design benefits from collaborative strategies such as co-design. The content analysis revealed that the most prominent type of design discourse used by IDs was problem-solving, followed closely by discourse surrounding tools, and user experience; however other dynamics, such as gender balance and the presence of multiple instructional designers correlated with differences in instructional solutions.

Collaboration is widely known to be beneficial in the workplace, with many job announcement analyses confirming it as a desired skill (Klein & Kelly, 2018; Lowenthal et al., 2010; Wakefield et al., 2012; Wang et al., 2021). During the COVID-19 pandemic, practitioners found new opportunities to collaborate with colleagues across industries. One such collaboration allowed instructional design practitioners in higher education to work with staff from a military organization on the design and development of content for a microlearning mobile app called NeNA. This paper will explore the benefits of cross-organizational collaboration and co-design on instructional design projects, such as better design, improved communication, and increased effectiveness, using the NeNA project as an example.

Designing online teacher professional development (oTPD) grounded in participatory practices is complex. An intense interdisciplinary collaboration of teacher educators, online learning experts, and instructional designers is needed. Achieving shared understanding is essential for successful collaboration, yet varied perspectives of interdisciplinary experts can cause tensions. Under the right conditions, conflict can be positive and productive. This study of collaborative design practice examined the process of aligning technology and pedagogy when designing participatory oTPD using the self-study methodology. Data analysis revealed relevant interrelationships and uncovered a consistent pattern related to purposeful use of technology. While self-study was an effective inquiry method and provided valuable insights into our practice, it also fostered an environment of trust and collaborative knowledge exchange necessary for successful joint problem solving, cognitive synchronization, and innovation in interdisciplinary design teams.