BMSC 230: Metabolism

I worked on this course as the lead instructional designer beginning in 2016. I’ve chosen to focus on this course for a few reasons:

  1. This course was very formally designed as an asynchronous course and, while valuable, it was a time consuming process. In my growth as an instructional designer I began to realize that this approach was not always necessary as the only way to design online courses.
  2. We had the opportunity to circle back a few years when better technology became available.
  3. I was working with Dr. Bill Roesler, the department head, who was on a sabbatical at the time. I truly benefited from our collaboration.

very formally designed

Canvas Home Page for BMSC 230
Canvas Home Page for BMSC 230

BMSC 230 had a standard format with the Distance Education Unit (DEU) course design template. The course content centred around the Syllabus, Modules, and Quizzes.

Module 1 list of content
Module 1 list of content

Modules had separate pages for each item, making them feel too vast. But you can see the standard content items that were included in each module. I was following the instructional design practice developed at the DEU. We first designed the Course Design Plan and then moved on to the Modules as we worked through the project timeline.

the opportunity to circle back

One of my favourite parts of this course is that we used Adobe Captivate to design interactive learning activities for the students to use. I did not design these for Bill. We worked together designing these activities. They were clunky and colourful, but at the time I felt we were on the leading edge.

We had the opportunity to circle back to these activities a few years later and re-design them using H5P. I also designed the WordPress site so he could openly share the interactive activities. Visit Interactive Activities for Metabolic Pathways to find out more about our work and also to try them out.

Our WordPress site for sharing the H5P activities

I truly benefited

Bill Roesler and Kristine Dreaver-Charles
Bill Roesler and Kristine Dreaver-Charles

In 2018, we went to Halifax and presented at the Canadian Association for University Continuing Education conference. Our presentation was titled Responsive eLearning Exercises to Enhance Student Interaction with Metabolic Pathways.

While working with Bill, he found out that I was starting a PhD and he suggested we publish an article. I was able to learn about academic publishing. The paper, Responsive eLearning exercises to enhance student interaction with metabolic pathways, is available in the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education journal and it focused on those early Adobe Captivate activities. I also appreciated that my contribution to this publication had nothing to do with my Indigeniety. I have to mention that likely there are not a lot of Indigenous women from Prince Albert that are published in an academic biochemistry journal and so I have this printed and framed. I truly benefited from our work together.

Overall, I would have to say my approach to designing this course was to stay within the standard process of asynchronous course design at the DEU, while making space for some innovation and collaboration with the subject matter expert. This work with Bill led to one of my early academic conference presentations and I have tried to build from this experience throughout my career at USask.