Instructional design is at the heart of online classes at St. Joseph’s. The College’s instructional designers, Monica Yatsyla and Jaclyn Gulinello, work tirelessly to make sure online classes present materials in a way that’s helpful for students, encourage professors to personalize classes with videos and provide training to new online instructors.
“We don’t want to put out courses for the college that are robotic,” Yatsyla said. “We want students to know that behind that screen there is an instructor present and available to them at all times — or most times. They do have to sleep sometimes!”
Yatsyla became an instructional designer at St. Joseph’s College in 2019. Gulinello joined her amid the COVID-19 pandemic, as the College poured more resources into its online modalities when it temporarily moved all classes to a digital format.
The pandemic drew a lot of attention to instructional designers in colleges and universities across the country. Instructional design was dubbed the “hottest job in higher education” by Inside Higher Ed because of the immaculate way these employees led an unprecedented digital transformation during the pandemic when institutions had to switch their entire operation to online modalities in a matter of days.
“No one knew what instructional design was. There wasn’t this big need for instructional designers as much as there is now,” Gulinello said. “There are a lot of articles being written about instructional design now and it has really highlighted our field!”
Instructional Design at St. Joseph’s College
Improving the accessibility of online courses is among the biggest long-term goals for the College’s institutional designers, who work as part of the College’s Department of Technology Education, led by Maureen Williams.
Ensuring all classes are accessible is a big task, but Yatsyla and Gulinello are motivated to make online courses an impactful experience for all students. This includes ensuring all the documents — such as PDFs, videos and images — can be accessed with e-readers and other assistive technologies.
“Once you really get into it, you realize how many things really aren’t accessible to so many people,” Gulinello said. “I think it’s really great, and really important, that we’re doing as much as we are doing.”
The instructional designers are also hard at work revamping the College’s course design checklist, used to review courses to make sure they meet the intended standards. But once the design checklist is revamped, it probably won’t be long until they are back updating it again.
“With instructional design, there is no ‘end goal,’” Yatsyla explained. “You can take that same course that you just completed and the next year you can completely revamp it — all of it.”
While the work can seem endless, Yatsyla and Gulinello take pride in SJC’s online classes.
“I think it’s really cool when you start off with just an idea and you end up with this full course that comes together after all of the hard work that the faculty and I put in,” Gulinello said. “These courses don’t just come together or just happen on their own. Online courses require a lot of time, hours and planning to ensure students receive the same experience online as they would get in an in-person class.”
“That’s the rewarding piece of it,” Yatsyla added. “After weeks of working with the faculty, you have this nice product at the end and you’re so proud of it.”
