Faculty members are often asked to do a lot. They teach, advise, research, serve on committees, respond to students, revise curriculum, assess learning, and keep up with changes in their fields. Somewhere in the middle of all that, they are also expected to design effective courses.
That is a heavy lift.
The good news is that faculty do not have to design courses alone. In many institutions, instructional designers are available through centers for teaching and learning, online education offices, academic technology units, colleges, departments, or program-level support teams. Their titles and locations may vary, but their role is often the same: to help faculty design stronger, more intentional, more student-centered learning experiences.
That support matters because course design requires more than subject matter expertise. Faculty bring deep knowledge of the discipline. They know the concepts, debates, skills, professional expectations, and intellectual habits students need to develop. Instructional designers bring expertise in learning design. They understand alignment, sequencing, accessibility, assessment, engagement, student workload, online learning, and how students move through a course.
When those two areas of expertise come together, the result can be a much stronger course than either person could create alone.
The key is collaboration. Instructional designers are not there to take over a course, and faculty are not expected to hand over their expertise. The best partnerships happen when both parties understand their roles, respect each other’s contributions, and keep student learning at the center of the work.
For faculty preparing to work with an instructional designer, here are six strategies that can make the collaboration more productive.
1. Start with outcomes, not content
Faculty often begin course design by thinking about content. What readings should students complete? What lectures need to be recorded? What topics need to be covered? What assignments have been used in the past?
Those are important questions, but they should not be the starting point.
A better place to begin is with learning outcomes. What should students be able to do by the end of the course? What should they understand, apply, analyze, create, evaluate, or demonstrate? What would count as evidence that they have learned what the course was designed to teach?
Instructional designers can help faculty make this shift from coverage to learning. That shift is not always easy because faculty often have more content than time. Most courses contain more possible material than students can reasonably absorb. Starting with outcomes helps determine what matters most.
This does not mean content is unimportant. It means content should serve the learning goals. Readings, lectures, discussions, activities, and assignments should all connect back to what students are expected to learn.
A useful opening conversation with an instructional designer might begin with this question: “By the end of this course, what do I want students to be able to do that they cannot do now?”
That question gives the design process direction.
2. Clarify roles and expertise early
One of the most helpful things faculty and instructional designers can do early in the process is clarify what each person brings to the partnership.
Faculty are the subject matter experts. They know the discipline. They know what students need to learn. They understand the expectations of the field, the level of complexity appropriate for the course, and the kinds of thinking students need to practice.
Instructional designers are learning design experts. They know how to structure learning experiences, align objectives with assessments, organize content, design activities, support accessibility, improve clarity, and reduce unnecessary friction for students.
These roles are complementary. One does not replace the other.
Problems can arise when the roles are misunderstood. Faculty may worry that an instructional designer will try to change the substance of the course or question their expertise. Instructional designers may feel frustrated if they are treated only as technical support or asked to simply upload materials into the learning management system.
A better approach is to name the partnership directly.
The faculty member might say, “I know the content and the goals of the course. I am looking for your help making sure the course is well designed for student learning.”
The instructional designer might say, “I will rely on your disciplinary expertise, and I will help think through structure, alignment, student experience, and design.”
That kind of clarity builds trust. It also prevents the work from becoming territorial.
3. Stay open to redesign, not just formatting help
Instructional designers can certainly help make a course cleaner, clearer, and easier to navigate. They can help organize modules, improve page layouts, check links, review accessibility, and make the learning management system easier for students to use.
But their value goes well beyond formatting.
A strong instructional designer can help faculty rethink the course itself. That might mean revising assignments, changing the sequence of topics, breaking a large project into smaller stages, adding more opportunities for practice, improving discussion prompts, building in feedback loops, or replacing a lecture-heavy module with a more active learning experience.
This requires openness from the faculty member. If the course design process begins with “I already know exactly what I want, and I just need someone to put it online,” the collaboration will be limited. The designer may still be helpful, but the course may miss an opportunity to become stronger.
A more productive mindset is: “Here is what I have done before. Here is what I am trying to accomplish. Help me think through whether this is the best way to get students there.”
That does not mean every recommendation from an instructional designer needs to be accepted. Faculty still make important decisions about the course. But being open to redesign creates space for better ideas to emerge.
Sometimes the most useful design question is not “How do we build this?” but “Should we build it this way at all?”
4. Treat the designer as a collaborator, not a technician
Instructional designers are often asked to fix things: build a course shell, upload files, create quiz settings, adjust due dates, format pages, or troubleshoot the learning management system. Those tasks may be part of the work, but they should not define the relationship.
Faculty get more from the partnership when they treat the instructional designer as a collaborator rather than a technician.
A technician receives instructions. A collaborator helps solve problems.
That distinction matters.
If a faculty member says, “Please upload these lectures and assignments into the course,” the designer can complete the task. But if the faculty member says, “I want students to understand this concept and apply it in a realistic situation. Here is what I usually do. How might we design this more effectively?” the designer can contribute at a much higher level.
Collaboration also requires conversation. Good course design is rarely created through a single handoff of materials. It usually involves questions, revisions, tradeoffs, and decisions.
Why is this assignment placed here?
What are students expected to do before they attempt it?
Where will they receive feedback?
How much time will this take?
What will students find confusing?
How does this activity connect to the outcome?
These are not challenges to the faculty member’s authority. They are design questions. They are the kinds of questions that help make a course more coherent and more effective.
When faculty invite those questions, the course improves.
5. Be willing to explain your teaching choices
Every faculty member has teaching choices that make sense to them. A reading is assigned because it introduces a key theory. A lecture is included because students usually struggle with a concept. A discussion is placed in a certain week because it prepares students for a later assignment. A final project is structured a certain way because it mirrors professional practice.
But those reasons are not always visible to someone outside the course.
Instructional designers can be much more helpful when faculty explain the purpose behind their choices. Why this reading? Why this assignment? Why this sequence? Why this activity? Why this assessment?
This is especially important when a designer asks questions that may initially feel basic or even obvious. For example, a designer might ask, “What do you want students to get out of this discussion?” or “How does this quiz connect to the module objective?”
Those questions are not meant to diminish the faculty member’s expertise. They are meant to uncover the logic of the course so that the design can support it.
Sometimes, explaining a teaching choice confirms that the choice is strong. Other times, the explanation reveals that the choice may need to be revised. A reading may be important, but too advanced for where it appears in the course. An assignment may be valuable, but missing the scaffolding students need. A discussion may ask a good question, but not give students enough structure to answer it well.
The point is not to defend every existing choice. The point is to make the reasoning visible so it can be strengthened.
6. Keep the student experience at the center
Course design is not only about what the instructor teaches. It is also about what students experience.
This is one of the most important contributions an instructional designer can make. Designers often look at a course from the student’s point of view. What will students see first? Will they understand what to do? Are the instructions clear? Is the workload reasonable? Do the activities prepare them for the assessments? Are deadlines visible? Is feedback built into the course? Can students tell how each piece fits together?
Faculty naturally see the course through the lens of their own expertise. That is appropriate. They know where students need to end up. But students experience the course as learners, often encountering material for the first time. What feels obvious to an expert may feel unclear to a novice.
A well-designed course helps close that gap.
Keeping the student experience at the center does not mean making the course easy. It means making the course purposeful. Students can be challenged and supported at the same time. They can be pushed to think deeply while still receiving clear instructions, meaningful practice, and useful feedback.
When faculty and instructional designers work together, one of their shared goals should be to reduce unnecessary confusion so students can focus their energy on learning the material.
That is a worthwhile design goal.
A partnership worth using
Faculty do not need to be experts in every part of course design. They do not need to know every best practice in online learning, every accessibility standard, every learning management system feature, or every approach to assessment design.
They need to know their field. They need to know what students should learn. They need to bring their teaching goals, disciplinary knowledge, and professional judgment to the table.
Instructional designers bring a different but equally important form of expertise. They help translate those goals into a learning experience that is organized, aligned, accessible, engaging, and focused on students.
The strongest courses are often built through that partnership.
So if you are preparing to design or revise a course, do not assume you have to go it alone. Find out what instructional design support exists at your institution. It may be located in a center for teaching and learning, an online learning office, a college-level support unit, or even within your department.
Then start the conversation.
Bring your expertise. Invite theirs. Ask questions. Explain your choices. Stay open to revision. Keep students at the center.
That is where better course