Instructional Technology: Short-Term Accelerated Course Design

To meet students’ needs for greater flexibility in terms of course time commitments and scheduling, higher education institutions are increasingly adopting short-term accelerated courses and programs. Designing and teaching such courses can present unique challenges. This resource aims to provide guidance on designing and delivering accelerated learning environments and share strategies and best practices for conducting course planning, designing learning assessments, selecting essential course content, delivering classroom instruction, and ensuring student engagement and motivation.

A well-built short-term accelerated course must maintain rigor, academic standards and focus on its specific goal(s), ensuring that the student leaves the class learning essential knowledge and skills. Here is a list of the characteristics of Successful Short-Term Accelerated Courses:

• Are well planned
• Take an “outcome-based” rather than “content delivery” approach
• Adopt learning design focuses on active learning techniques, authentic assessment, sufficient and timely feedback, and clear communication with students about commitment involved.
• Implement a variety of engaging and creative teaching and learning strategies, where depth rather breadth of learning was preferred to avoid information overload.
• Offers consistent course structure and expectations, immersive and engaging project-based, curriculum, and multiple opportunities to share with and learn from peers.
• Use various methods for face-to-face/synchronous instruction (micro-lectures, small group work, individual work, etc.)
• Create a classroom environment that is supportive, relaxed and comfortable.

More information can be found from the Short-Term Accelerated Course Design Guidelines.