Foothill College
Case Study
CONSTRUCT K12 CASE STUDY
Partnership Length:
November 2019 -June 2020
FC Headquarters:
Los Altos Hills,
California
Number of Learners:
~10,000
About Foothill College
Foothill College educates students from diverse backgrounds that represent
the demographics of the Bay Area, with particular attention to underserved and underrepresented populations. Founded in 1957, Foothill has offered classes since 1958 and opened Foothill College in 1961. It was one of the first colleges to offer online courses and offers 100+ degrees and certificates. The Foothill College online learning team supported their instructors but hired Construct to work with them individually as Learning Designers. One of the project's goals was to align with the OEI rubric and facilitate a stronger connection between online instructors, learning designers, and the online learning team at Foothill College.
Challenges
Foothill College entered into a partnership with Construct due to their desire to uplift their courses, both visually and through learning design. The Foothill College online learning team needed to serve a large number of faculty, of which each outlined their own unique set of challenges for how they wanted to elevate their course(s). These challenges depended largely on the specific focus and driving outcomes of each defined course curriculum.
27
COURSES
UPLIFTED
All in alignment with the California Virtual Campus - Online Education Initiative (CVC- OEI) rubric.
Construct gave us the ability to serve 30 faculty, where our small department would have only been able to help 5.
- Lené Whitley-Putz
DEAN OF ONLINE LEARNING
FOOTHILL COLLEGE
Partnering with Construct
Lené Whitley-Putz, Dean of Online Learning at Foothill College, first discovered Construct when she signed up to create a course video with Construct at InstructureCon. Lené “was impressed with [her] side conversations and how enjoyable it was to work with Construct staff.”
When Foothill College received a grant to support its faculty in reviewing and enhancing their courses, they connected with Construct to help. The support from Construct “provided faculty with customized support to import into their courses so that teachers could have more time to focus on teaching and developing their teaching practices to advance the quality of each course” (Lené Whitley-Putz).
With Construct’s visual uplift and support with laying out each course, Foothill College faculty were able to “better recognize their goals” and “understand the value of the relationship between learning activities and content” (Foothill College Staff).
At the end of the project, Foothill College was able to walk away with not only several uplifted courses but also a revised plan for professional development, continued encouragement of assessment analysis, and a new knowledge built around learning from material and course blueprinting.
Project Goals
1
Collaborating successfully with diverse faculty with an array of different skill sets
2
Aligning courses to the CVC course quality rubric
3
Addressing the needs of individual professors and implementing into each unique course
4
Increasing the accessibility of courses
5
Uplifting courses visually and creating navigational graphics
I really do wish California community colleges would recognize
the value in crowdsourcing the material.
- Lené Whitley-Putz
DEAN OF ONLINE LEARNING
FOOTHILL COLLEGE
The Process
Phase 1
Design & Discovery
At the start of every course, a Construct Learning Strategist or Learning Designer would meet with a Foothill College instructor. Each course would then be peer-reviewed to align with OEI standards while the team decided on project goals and targets. Construct would then create a Learning Blueprint for the instructor, which would serve as a mini-project plan. As the instructor worked on revisions, Construct would work on other elements of the project!
Phase 2
Learning Delivery
The Construct Learning team would then create an inventory of the course, review the blueprints, and provide recommendations on adding to the content, particularly relating to visual uplifts. The outcomes were then reviewed and signed-off by instructors.
Phase 3
Visual Design & Discovery
Course outcomes varied depending on the instructor and course needs, but this phase’s goal was to implement changes desired by instructors to help the course meet the OEI goals. The majority of instructors required more visually appealing and engaging graphics to be made to enhance the course.
Phase 4
Final Review
Once Construct implemented the desired changes and delivered any required research/recommendations, the instructors at Foothill College would review the work to ensure their goals and visions had been understood and then signed off!
When Covid-19 hit, we would have had to abandon our grant project without Construct and the work Jessica [the project manager] did to keep the ball moving.
- Lené Whitley-Putz
DEAN OF ONLINE LEARNING
FOOTHILL COLLEGE
Results
Construct uplifted and delivered 27 courses within six weeks, per course.
Construct produced 280+ custom graphics for Foothill College.
Construct helped Foothill College meet their deadlines for the CVC-OEI and the Improving Online CTE Pathways Grant.
Foothill College was named the #1 online community college in California and #3 online community college in the nation.
Foothill College serves ~10,000 users, both online and on-campus.
Foothill College will employ the blueprinting method going forward when assessing the quality of their courses.
Construct offers what is normally a very small group of people the opportunity to thought-partner with a bigger organization who have a bigger bench than we have. We were able to use that bench to help us strengthen our small department.
- Lené Whitley-Putz
DEAN OF ONLINE LEARNING
FOOTHILL COLLEGE
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