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The quality of academic programs is drastically affected by the design of the courses within the program. The design and delivery of courses are the most essential elements for building quality in academic programs. The purpose of this paper is to customize the techniques of quality function deployment (QFD) for designing courses and demonstrate its use in the design of a basic statistics course in the Department of Systems Engineering, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals. In this study, organizations from industry are used as external customers. Faculty members and students are utilized as internal customers to identify the course technical requirements. Then QFD process planning matrices are used for developing several alternative course design concepts. Then based on a simple decision criterion the design concept that closely meets customer requirements is identified. The result of the analysis is a balanced basic statistics course.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how to design a web‐based course in the context of China for self‐directed learning from four perspectives – i.e. pedagogical, psychological, social and technological – and also to summarize the design principles for the web‐based course.

The paper reviews literature related to: self‐directed learning, with a view to bringing out its capabilities and capacities for use in a web‐based environment; theories and pedagogies of learning with a view to imbuing them for the design of web‐based courses; and challenges of the design of web‐based courses with a view to gauging its acceptability.

The development of a successful web‐based course needs to focus on multiple perspectives — pedagogical, psychological, social and technological – in order to contextualize it for learner‐centeredness. The results show that the course designed based on these dimensions was flexible, useful and welcomed.

This paper describes a conceptual framework for designing a web‐based course from four perspectives and also presents a series of design principles for a web‐based course.

This research aimed to define the factors that may impact the effectiveness of online architectural education during COVID-19 and to examine the degree of students' and instructors' satisfaction with these factors among Jordanian governmental universities. Further, the research examines the relationships/interrelationships between the degree of their satisfaction with these factors and the students' and instructors' age, gender, education level, home size, and family size.

Different research methods were used to achieve the research purposes, including semi-structured interviews, online questionnaires and reviewing recent literature. This research used descriptive statistics and Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient (Pearson r) to analyze the data.

This research found that online architectural education during COVID-19 was stressful. It was ineffective in teaching practical architectural courses like design and negatively affected the architectural learning process and outcomes. In contrast, the online teaching of architectural theoretical courses was reliable and convenient if the students and instructors had intentional, sufficient technological and appropriate resources. Online architectural education negatively affected the students' design ability and skills, peer review, intended learning outcomes (ILOs) achievements, the quality of feedback, workload, interaction mode, participation, collaboration, productivity and increased cheating on online exams. The home environment was unsuitable for online architectural education. Family interventions, privacy, home size and family size significantly influence online architectural education's effectiveness.

Students' and instructors' satisfaction determines the continuity of using online teaching mode, which depends on information quality, system quality, service quality, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, achieved intended learning outcomes, cognitive absorption, skills, motivation, engagement, implementing resources and strategies and positive emotions as hope and enjoyment. Students' and instructors' satisfaction reflects how they view their learning experience, which is crucial in assessing the effectiveness of online education quality that focuses on the context, input, process and product, which is still not clearly understood, particularly for developing countries.

A major aim of the design studio is to educate students to be well-equipped designers. To do so, a student should be able to grasp the divergent information of various courses and integrate that knowledge into their design problems. But are students aware of the emphasis placed on incorporating different curriculum courses into the design studio? Do they find it beneficial while developing a design project? To what extent do they think this integration has an impact on their success in the design studio and in their adaptation to professional practice? This paper seeks to find out whether the integration between the design studio and other curriculum courses is productive from students' perspectives and determine if there is a consensus between students and instructors on the significance of transferring knowledge from curriculum courses to design projects. In addition, the paper examines the position of the design studio as an integrative medium between education and practice in the Turkish context.

The purpose of this paper is to explore four general design features of King Digital Entertainment’s game “Candy Crush Saga” – structural, social, cognitive, and emotional – that reflect the principles of Universal Design for Learning and discusses how these features can be applied to course design in order to motivate learner persistence and increase student success.

Both authors are casual Candy Crush game players intrigued by how the game motivates users to continue. The methodology began with participant observation and expanded to “deconstruction” of game features and application of research findings in multiple disciplines to build the argument that game design strategies can be applied to course design to enhance learning outcomes.

Many factors influence game play, but it is crucial for each level to provide increasing challenges that motivate increased mastery but do not frustrate a player to the point of quitting. Similarly, course design that provides the opportunity for learners to achieve a sense of “flow” through the opportunity to identify goals, meet challenges, and receive feedback may encourage them to persist even when they are working autonomously as in some online environments.

This paper is based on an analysis of the design of a single game and has not been formally tested on course design. Some suggestions may be easier to implement in courses than others.

The paper offers 14 structural, three social, four cognitive, and six social design strategies that can be implemented in course design as a way to potentially enhance learner engagement and learning outcomes.

No published research exists that connects game design and course design in this fashion.

While there is significant existing literature on learner analysis in instructional design and separately in cultural issues in education, these two areas are rarely examined in tandem. This paper aims to bring these two areas together.

This research uses qualitative methods within the context of a case study. A dual role is played by the author as instructor‐researcher in gathering and analyzing the data.

One area of success in the course is that it served to increase the coverage of the area of instructional design in addition to expanding the literature base in this area of study that has only recently begun to receive attention.

One limitation of the course is that while it is designed to provide a blended mix of learning opportunities, the instructional design field is quite large and it is impossible to explore all relevant topics.

A challenge of the course is that socio‐cultural concepts are broad and it is recognized that a single course is not enough to effectively cover all relevant issues. Careful course design is therefore important.

Feedback from this study can serve as a resource for decision making about existing and additional courses, and specific content that could be incorporated into similar courses.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a novel undergraduate course on serious game design and development that integrates both game and instructional design, thus providing an effective approach to teaching serious game design and development. Very little effort has been dedicated to the teaching of proper serious game design and development leading to many examples of serious games that provide little, if any, educational value.

Organized around a collection of video clips (that provided a brief contextualized overview of the topic and questions for further exploration), readings, interdisciplinary research projects and games, the course introduced the principles of game and instructional design, educational theories used to support game-based learning and methods for evaluating serious games. Discussions and activities supported the problems that students worked on throughout the course to develop a critical stance and approach toward implementing game-based learning. Students designed serious games and examined potential issues and complexities involved in developing serious games and incorporating them within a teaching curriculum.

Results of student course evaluations reveal that the course was fun and engaging. Students found the course fun and engaging, and through the successful completion of the final course project, all students met all of the course objectives. A discussion regarding the techniques and approaches used in the course that were successful (or unsuccessful) is provided.

It should be noted that a more detailed analysis has not been presented to fully demonstrate the effectiveness of the course. A more detailed analysis may have included a comparison with, for example, past versions of the course that was not based on an online problem-based learning (PBL) approach, to better quantify the effectiveness of the course. However, such a comparison could not be carried out here, given there was no measure of prior knowledge of students taken before they took course (e.g. no “pre-test data”).

Unlike the few existing courses dedicated to serious game design, the course was designed specifically to facilitate a fully online PBL approach and provided students the opportunity to take control of their own learning through active research, exploration and problem-solving alone, in groups and through facilitated class discussions.

Key elements of a curriculum are presented for a faculty development program that integrated sustainability content with effective course design methodology across a variety of disciplines. The study aims to present self-reported impacts for a small number of faculty participants and their courses.

A yearlong faculty development program to introduce content and effective course design for teaching about sustainability was created through a content-driven, backward design approach. Faculty participants from two cohorts were surveyed electronically to evaluate their perceptions of the impact of the program on their courses and professional development either one or two years after completing the program.

The theoretical model, curriculum and assignments for the sustainability-enhanced program are presented and discussed. Faculty participant responses to a survey (n = 14) following completion of the program indicated that the process changed pedagogical approaches, created a sense of community and raised awareness of campus resources. Faculty perceived that sustainability content enhanced their course redesign by providing “real-world” relevance, awareness and engagement. More than half of the respondents reported using tools they learned in the program to redesign elements of other courses. Three respondents indicated that integrating sustainability content into their courses had little to no benefit.

The study did not explore the impact of the program on faculty and student learning.

The tools presented are practice-ready.

This study can inform the design and evaluation of other sustainability-related faculty development programs.

The events surrounding the COVID-19 crisis had a profound effect on higher education, forcing students and instructors to face a sudden transition to wholly online learning contexts. This paper aims to examine how the design of a residential course was adapted to an online context and how this adaptation may prove beneficial to future iterations of the course.

This analysis centers on a master’s-level course in which students design software to support learning. One of the major changes to the course revolves around the transition from a traditional rubric-based grading scheme to a specifications grading system. This latter approach provides a series of binary (pass/fail) requirements (specifications) that students must meet to pass. Various forms of interactions were also altered during the transition; the authors investigate these in the paper.

This study found that the move to specifications grading helped students and the instructor to focus on the important work of meeting course learning goals. The approach also aligned well with authentic scenarios in which software projects are tested against certain specifications. Finally, this study concludes that thinking about specifications grading in the future can help us to develop more resilient pedagogical design approaches that respond to various forms of disruptions and changes.

The course design insights described in this paper illustrate alternative ways of instruction that can be especially useful during times of emergency, but which may also provide an added level of authenticity and learner motivation during times of stability.

Few resources exist to incorporate principles of modular approach to course design. This research aimed to help instructors by presenting principles for practical and empirically informed modular course design in engineering education.

In the first phase, a systematic literature review was completed to identify categories addressing a modular course design. Search and screening procedures resulted in 33 qualifying articles describing the development of a modular course. In the second phase, 6 expert interviews were conducted to elaborate on the identified categories.

Guided by the interview results and the ADDIE (Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate) course design model, the categories were compiled into six design principles. To present the design principles in relation to the guiding principles of modular approach, an overarching conceptual model was developed.

Here, we present our innovation; a foundation for an evidence-based systematic approach to modular course design. Implications have value for supporting flexibility and autonomy in learning.