2u how to design a course

How do I design and build a course?

 · A simplified concept map for the course design process: Pinpoint the course goals. What do you want the students to learn and be able to accomplish? With your goals clearly defined, decisions to include certain content, the teaching methods to employ, and the types of assignments and exams to utilize can be more readily determined.

Why choose 2U for online learning?

We come to work to help our university partners’ faculty adapt and enhance their pedagogy and create meaningful, effective programs and courses. Curriculum development. Drive the enhancement of curricula to meet learning goals. Course strategy. Work with faculty to create outcomes-driven experiences. Course development.

What is the 2U strategy?

As the parent company of edX, 2U knows online education needs are a spectrum. It’s our job to make it accessible to students wherever they are—in their lives and their communities. …

How will 2U impact the education landscape?

2U Inc. is an education technology company that partners with top colleges and universities to bring their degree programs and credit-bearing courses online. 2U isn’t all about algorithms …

How to decide what materials to use?

First, determine what materials and text (s) you will use dependent on whether the course goals are met best by a published text or course reader of combined materials either published elsewhere or even consist ing of unpublished material. When making a decision, think about the cost factor in obtaining the materials for your students. You might want to place on reserve some of the material for the student to read, borrow, photocopy or even download themselves.

What to do after course goals and content are determined?

After the course goals and content are determined, it is time to think about the content and how you will present it. You will need to choose your teaching methods and tools based on the 1) appropriateness for the class size and 2) those that are aligned with the course goals. These suggestions should be considered:

How to grade work?

Decide how to grade the work: papers, assignments, exams, and if appropriate, class participation. Determine how you will deal with issues of student tardiness, attendance, late work, and any extensions/rescheduling of assignments/exams.

What should the exam focus on?

For example, if a course goal is to sharpen problem-solving skills, then the exam should focus on a question that uses problem-solving, not mainly recalling facts. Similarly, both homework and class activities prior to the exam should involve questions and exercises that deal with problem-solving skills.

How to teach students to understand the material?

Organize the class structure and the topics to be taught with a clear rationale so the material is most understandable to your students. For example, you can talk to your students and explain the rationale behind how you structured the class, so they can better see how the topics build upon each other and/or how they show or bring differing perspectives. Through this discussion, your students most likely will increase and sustain interest in the content of the course. In addition, through structuring your course, you can better determine which texts would be most appropriate.

What should instructors know about backward design?

Basically, according to Backward Design, instructors should clearly define what they expect their students to have learned by the end of the course or section. See also: ADDIE Model. During the process of determining course goals, it is important to think about student learning.

What do you want students to learn and be able to accomplish?

What do you want the students to learn and be able to accomplish? With your goals clearly defined, decisions to include certain content, the teaching methods to employ, and the types of assignments and exams to utilize can be more readily determined. To help with curriculum planning primarily in defining goals to maximize student learning (opposed to course content, it is called Backward Design ), check out G. Wiggins and J. McTighe’s Understanding by Design (1998). Basically, according to Backward Design, instructors should clearly define what they expect their students to have learned by the end of the course or section.

What we do

The Learning Design & Development teams are creative thinkers, designers, and experts in pedagogy committed to helping our partner institutions create, produce, and deliver world-class educational offerings.

Open Positions

At 2U, our Learning Design & Development teams help bring higher digital education to life. If you have a passion for creating something impactful, join us.

Where we work

We believe education should have no boundaries, and we practice what we preach. While we may not all sit in the same office, we’re all united in our effort to transform the learning experience and digital higher education.

What is 2U online?

At 2U, it's a mix of proprietary technology and passionate people that truly powers our world-class online learning experience. And while we started with graduate programs, we're evolving to meet the needs of learners across their lifetimes.

What is 2UOS software?

Combining tech, people, and data, 2UOS is our proprietary operating system designed to seamlessly build, deliver, and support the offerings we power.

The Challenge

Due to the extraordinary success and growth of their business, 2U needed to increase the capacity and throughput of their course development processes for 2018 and beyond. Scaling business processes brings challenges, and rapidly growing teams can lose their sense of personalization and investment in the product.

Why Unicon?

2U didn’t want just any company giving them advice. They were looking for industry experts with extensive experience regarding the needs and challenges of online content creation, as well as a deep understanding of development processes and tools.

What is 2U mission?

At 2U, we’re on a mission—to eliminate the back row in higher education and help universities thrive in the digital age. To learn more about us, follow the links below.

What is MIT Sloan Executive Education?

At MIT Sloan Executive Education, we are focused on bridging the energy, engagement, and idea flow of in-person learning into online experiences.

What is 2U learning?

The 2U model is designed to deliver powerful digitally enabled learning at scale. It combines synchronous digital classes with asynchronous digital coursework and strategically placed in-person experiences in order to provide students with learning that will change their lives. Our unique ecosystem offers diverse modalities that are well suited to exactly the kinds of feeling, doing, and thinking that help students learn best.

What are some of the skills that 2U partners want their students to learn?

Some of the skills our partners want their students to learn require in-person, hands-on learning . Nurses, social workers, and physical therapists, for example, must interact with patients and clients. That’s why some 2U-powered learning experiences include in-person components like on-campus immersions or on-site fieldwork placements. These learning experiences help students understand what it is really like to be a professional in the field and see how their learning is relevant—an important factor in sustaining motivation. Fieldwork placements provide students with on-the-job practice opportunities and valuable feedback that bring to life everything they’ve learned in the digital space. And immersions can provide an opportunity for valuable skills practice and assessment, in addition to meaningful community building, that help students stay motivated and engaged throughout their degree program.

What is instructional strategy?

Instructional strategies are the teaching and learning activities in a course—whether readings, lectures, practice opportunities, or anything else—that are aimed at catalyzing the learning we hope to see in students . These are the “rungs of the ladder” that propel students toward completing their assessments and, by association, achieving the required learning objectives.

Why is it important to have a harmony of the three course components?

The harmony of these three course components provides consistency and clarity of purpose for all pieces of the learning experience and helps the student understand what they should be learning and why.

What is asynchronous coursework?

Many of the learning experiences we offer across the Career Curriculum Continuum contain some asynchronous coursework, which can provide effective opportunities for delivering content, engaging students in practice, and even encouraging social interaction. Our asynchronous coursework is delivered via 2U’s state-of-the-art learning technology, which is purpose-built to foster positive feelings about the learning experience by providing easy navigation and offering the learner choices in how they choose to consume their coursework, including options for mobile learning. It can host a wide range of practice and reflection activities that students can complete (and repeat) at their own convenience, including discussion forums and other tools to promote social interaction. Our video production teams help partners create studio-quality instructional content for asynchronous coursework that is both effective and engaging.

What is the best learning experience?

The best learning experiences are designed to deliver learning that is applied, long-lasting, and transferable. They build the learner’s confidence and provide knowledge and skills that can be used by the learner on the job in their future career. This “robust learning” lasts longer, can be used in a range of contexts, and lays the foundation for future learning (Koedinger, Aleven, Roll & Baker, 2009). We established the Learning Experience Framework to codify our approach to designing effective learning experiences that deliver the best possible learning in our environment.

Why do students learn better?

Students learn better when they are driven more by internal reasons than external rewards or consequences. This intrinsic motivation leads to increased engagement with the learning process, which, in turn, reinforces motivation.

What is 2U education?

2U is an education platform that invests in and partners with universities to offer online degrees, charges students tuition, and shares revenue with its partners. 2U is an education platform company that provides cloud-based SaaS solutions to colleges and universities so they may offer degree programs to students anywhere online.

What is 2U college?

WHAT IS IT? 2U is a platform company that connects institutions of higher education with students. It provides cloud-based SaaS solutions that its partner colleges and universities can use to offer full-length online degree programs.

How has 2U impacted the education landscape?

Throughout its remarkable streak of success, 2U has impacted the education landscape by “reconfiguring value creation to tap new sources of supply” in the sense that old institutions are supplying content in new ways [22], and “reconfiguring value consumption by enabling new forms of consumer behavior” [23].

What is 2U strategy?

2U strategy reflects a decision to focus on suppliers: schools. They charge no fee for universities to use their platform solutions, going so far as to call them ‘partners’ and engage with them on content creation, investing $5-10M into each partnership. Their strategy can be contrasted with Coursera, perhaps the most well-known of the MOOCs (massive, open online courses), which has created an open and free platform attracting over 20M users taking over 2,000 classes, from at least 149 institutions [3]. The value of 2U’s approach is reflected in the $1.2B in attrition-adjusted tuition bookings the platform has generated to date [4].

Does 2U charge schools?

2U does not charge the schools, but charges the students. It shares these revenues with the schools, creating financial value for suppliers (schools) and content value for users (students). Both direct and indirect network effects are engaged to fuel growth and sustainability.

Is 2U a coworking space?

In January of this year, 2U announced a new partnership with WeWork, the co-working space company. This partnership promises to provide spaces for 2U students, offer scholarship opportunities for WeWork members and employees , and make available WeWork’s Flatiron School and their technological capabilities to 2U’s institutional partners [20]. This move further enhances the value proposition of 2U, creates more opportunities for same-side network effects between co-habitating students, and shows that 2U understand that “in the world of platforms, competition becomes less important than cooperation and co-creation” [21].

What is 2U mission?

At 2U, we’re on a mission—to eliminate the back row in higher education and help universities thrive in the digital age. To learn more about us, follow the links below.

What is 2U Cape Town?

Learn about this mission-driven nonprofit that provides critical academic tutoring, career guidance, and psycho-social support services to disadvantaged high school students across South Africa. So far in 2021, nearly three dozen 2U Cape Town employees have joined its volunteer mentor program.

What is 2U workforce engagement?

Driven by deep insights and data-rich feedback from our industry partners, 2U’s Workforce Engagement team has developed a robust career workshop series to help students gain a competitive edge with employers.

Is 2U a back row?

For the past 13 years, 2U has been on a journey of eliminating the back row in higher education. Today marks one of the most significant milestones in that journey and in the evolution and growth of online education.