Ordinary support

Detroit Mercy's instructional designers would be happy to meet with you to discuss your plans for your online course or program. If you'd like, you can even schedule regular weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly meetings with the same designer as you develop your online course site.

Together, we'll determine the best way to achieve your educational goals in an online course environment. We'll help you determine which tools you'll need to use to develop course content and run your course, then teach you to use these tools efficiently and effectively.

The Instructional Design Studio also has available for check out a small number of headsets, web cams, and laptops with specialized course development software that faculty may use to develop online course content.

Designers can also provide you with a limited range of production services. After working with a designer to familiarize yourself with appropriate document formatting rules, designers can convert your Word files into question pools or tests for online courses. If you and a designer determine that your course would benefit from original video, IDS will work with you to film, produce, and provide your students with web-friendly video.

Extraordinary support

A college, department, or program may arrange an extraordinary support relationship with the Instructional Design Studio for a course or program. While services provided under the ordinary support level are still available, this exclusive and formalized relationship allows designers to provide faculty with a greater level of support. Under an extraordinary support relationship, an instructional designer will be assigned to faculty developing course content. Designer and faculty will schedule weekly or bi-weekly meetings throughout the course development process, so each may stay abreast of the others' work.

In an extraordinary support relationship, faculty will provide the instructional designers with raw course material (Word documents, images, PowerPoint presentations, Camtasia recordings, etc.). The designer will polish these documents, then load the finished products into a Blackboard course site.

Extraordinary support services are characterized by a formal relationship between the college, department, or program and the Instructional Design Studio. If an individual faculty person requires support services that generally fall under the "extraordinary" heading, case-by-case arrangements may be made.

Support Services Table

The following table is intended to give you an idea of the services available from the Instructional Design Studio, and whether these services qualify as Ordinary or Extraordinary. It should not be considered comprehensive. If you have need of a service, let us know how we can help.