Integrating Instructional Design and Student Support with Pratima Enfield

Pratima Enfield is the associate dean of instructional design at the United States Naval Community College. Prior to her current position, Pratima was the executive director of online learning at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Pratima and her SAIS colleagues bridged the gap between the instructional design and student support functions that are more typically siloed in online programs. Instructional designers work with faculty and student support staff work with students, so it’s not a given that these two teams will collaborate. But that’s exactly what happened at Johns Hopkins. I’m excited to have Pratima on the show today to tell us about it.

Episode Resources

·       Pratima Enfield’s LinkedIn page

Transcript

Derek Bruff (00:05):
Welcome to Intentional Teaching, a podcast aimed at educators to help them develop foundational teaching skills and explore new ideas and teaching. I'm your host, Derek Bruff. I hope this podcast helps you be more intentional in how you teach and in how you develop as a teacher. Over time, it can be challenging to design and implement effective online courses and programs in higher ed. Doing so often involves learning new technologies and new skills, as well as navigating new teaching contexts, new types of students, and even new regulatory environments. So much fun. But because of all that newness, sometimes an online program can catalyze new thinking about how we go about the work post-secondary education on the show today. I have a great example of this. Pratima Enfield is the Associate Dean of Instructional Design at the United States Naval Community College. Prior to her current position, Pratima was the executive director of online learning at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

(01:05):
It was her work at Johns Hopkins she presented at a conference last summer organized by UPCEA, the Online and Professional Education Association, and a sponsor of this podcast. Pratima presented a session titled "Bridging the Gap, integrating Online Experience and Curriculum Design for Engaged Learning" with her, Johns Hopkins colleague, Sandra Chadwell. Pratima and her colleagues bridged the gap between the instructional design and student support functions that are more typically siloed in online programs. Instructional designers work with faculty and student support staff work with students. So it's not a given that these two teams will collaborate, but that's exactly what happened at Johns Hopkins. I'm excited to have Pratima on the show today to tell us about it, and I think that those involved in either online or residential education, we'll learn some useful lessons from the collaboration that Pratima led.

(01:53):
Welcome, Pratima to the podcast. I'm glad to have you on today. I'm glad to get to know you a little bit more. Thanks for being here.

Pratima Enfield (02:03):
Thank you for having me.

Derek Bruff (02:05):
So I'll start with my usual opening question. Can you tell us about a time when you realized you wanted to be an educator?

Pratima Enfield (02:12):
Well, I'm actually a student of the arts language and literature. My bachelor's was in literature, English literature, specifically my master's, was in American Lit with an emphasis on post-colonial literature. And when I finished my master's, I was very driven by having or wanting to make a social impact. I was essentially at a crossroads and unsure as to how am I going to make that kind of an impact if I stayed in the field. I wanted to go on and get a PhD in literature, but I was getting more and more disillusioned about it. And after I finished my master's, I basically took a break and got a job, and the only job I could get with my extensive language and literature training was that of a content writer in this education company. So I started writing instructional content and it dawned on me, I was like, this is it.

(03:18):
I mean, think about the opportunity as in you can really, you have all these great minds at universities coming up with these concepts and theories and looking towards the future. And all of a sudden I was introduced, this is back in 2004, I was introduced to this medium where I could work with these great minds and bring that content out to a whole lot of people, folks who wouldn't have access to the universities that some of us do, and because of whatever reasons, whether it be financial or just life obligations. So it was like the clouds sort of parted, and it was like a moment of epiphany. And I then decided, yes, this is what I want to do. I specifically want to be in instructional design. I think this is a great fun field. And so then I went to get my PhD in instructional design, and the rest is history, and I've been focused on online education since then.

Derek Bruff (04:25):
Wow, okay. So connecting these academics and these scholars with learners and students of all kinds.

Pratima Enfield (04:32):
Yeah, I really feel mean it creates an opportunity for folks who traditionally wouldn't have had that chance. Even when I create these online programs, especially when I was at Hopkins, we brought an entire group of students who did not have the luxury to become full-time residential students. These were students who had families, who had jobs, who had kids, and they just couldn't give up a source of income for two whole years and study. So we were able to facilitate that, create that opportunity for these students, and that's what I set out to do. And I'm so glad and so fortunate that it has panned out that way.

Derek Bruff (05:15):
Yeah. Now, you have recently taken a new position at the US Naval Community College.

Pratima Enfield (05:21):
Yes.

Derek Bruff (05:21):
What does an associate Dean of Instructional design do at a place like that?

Pratima Enfield (05:26):
This was another very, very interesting opportunity. The defense, the Department of Defense has created over the years, many, many educational options for people who work in the defense. The military has, the Navy has, the Air Force does as well. It's a pretty vast network. And most of the educational approaches or opportunities the defense has created has predominantly been the officer making rank stage or say postgraduate work. And anything under the, say the officer rank, they have a lot of certificates and training opportunities like the Marine Corps University has a lot of these cybersecurity certificates and so on for folks who are in service and then eventually want to have some kind of competency after they retire. So the United States Naval Community College essentially was put in place to provide that kind of educational opportunity for the naval folks, which includes Navy, the Marines, as well as Coast Guard.

(06:43):
And what's unique about this is it's completely fully online. So these students don't have to go anywhere to complete their education, and most importantly, it's completely free, which means that they do not have to use the tuition assistance program to get these degrees. And the other interesting part about the US NCC, and I'm always amazed every time I'm like, I'm so fortunate to be part of this initiative. So what's additionally exciting about the US NCC is the fact that students who come into the US NCC, you take your basic naval certificate courses and so on, but the institution has partnerships, consortium partnerships with other universities where you can then go and get a degree in cybersecurity or get a complete a bachelor's degree or emergency management or whatever topic it is that you're interested in. You can pursue that completely free of cost. You don't have to use your tuition assistance dollars at all.

Derek Bruff (07:45):
Okay.

Pratima Enfield (07:46):
So It's absolutely...

Derek Bruff (07:46):
When you say that, I hear GI Bill, right?

Pratima Enfield (07:49):
Yeah, exactly. But GI Bill is after you've retired, this is while they're in service. So you don't have to wait until you retire and then go back to college. You can get your credentials, your degrees while you are enlisted, and then when you do retire or want to pursue or something else, you can go get a master's degree using your tuition assistance program or your GI bill. So it just opens up opportunities for these students.

Derek Bruff (08:16):
Well, let me ask a question that's just occurring to me, because you were at Johns Hopkins for a while with a different body of students that you were working with. They were looking at degrees in international studies. I'm curious, and most of my background, most of it, but not all of it, is with more traditional students, residential students, undergraduates, we pay a lot of attention to the motivations that students bring to the courses they take and learning experiences. And what are some maybe similarities or differences that you've observed between, and I know you've just started at the UNC, so maybe you don't have a read on this yet, but what kind of motivation did they bring and how is that the same or different than some of the Hopkins students that you worked with?

Pratima Enfield (09:03):
Well, that's a very good question, and I would reiterate that yes, I've just been on the job for two months this second month. But I will say, I mean, I can speak extensively to the motivations of the Hopkins students. These are mid-career students, and they're professionally pretty well placed, but they are looking forward. They're looking towards their next steps. Some of them are coming in with the desire to change their area of expertise. Some are coming in to move up in the area of work that they're doing, and they're highly motivated individuals. I mean, to think of it, if you are married with kids working a full-time job to go in and say, listen, I'm going to commit two years of my life on top of everything else that I have to getting a graduate degree at Hopkins, you have to be motivated. There is no other option.

(10:04):
So we get these highly driven, highly dedicated, involved, engaged students who come in and they're extremely thrilled about the fact that they can do it without having to pause their life. So the motivations are just, it's there. But from the administration administrative side, the way we look at it's to how do we keep them engaged? You want them to be motivated. They're coming in with the motivation, but how do we make sure that it doesn't die out or they don't give up? Because these degrees at Hopkins weren't easy, highly rigorous, 60 16 weeks of content sort of crammed into eight weeks, and these are full-time Hopkins faculty tenure, tenure track, and they're not going to just let you slide by. So it's a lot.

Derek Bruff (11:04):
And I think that leads naturally to the reason I wanted you on the podcast. So you co-presented a session at an UPCEAa conference last summer about blending curriculum development, curriculum design, which I think is kind of the traditional work of instructional designers with what you call the online student experience. And I think I know what curriculum design means, teaching center folks do similar type of work with faculty, but what do you mean by online student experience and maybe how has that illustrated with these two different student groups?

Pratima Enfield (11:40):
So I think a good place to start would be if we were to talk about, say, a traditional student, students that you interact with. So these students, whether they're at the graduate level, undergraduate level students, they come in, they're on campus or maybe an apartment right next to the campus. They're moving in and out of all the common buildings, they're attending all the events that the university's hosting, they can go and meet their faculty if they want to. They can sometimes bump into their peers at the local restaurant or cafe, and even their faculty and other admin or administration that they work with. So they're part of the community. They're right there for the students who are in online programs, that's not the case. They're far away. They're, as the data suggests, they're at least about a hundred miles away or within a hundred miles, let's say, but they're not on campus. So how do we make sure that these students who are not part of this learning community, because for you to be a successful student, not only do you have to be engaged in the classroom, but there is a level of engagement that happens outside the classroom that helps you feel like you are part of this learning community. And as we all know, there's a direct correlation between persistence and sense of belonging to a learning community.

(13:04):
So how do we do that in the online environment and therefore this whole initiative of the online student experience, as we intentionally think about curriculum design as instructional designers, we're intentionally thinking about how do we keep these students engaged, completing their assignments on task, going through the readings and so on and so forth. There's a lot of thought behind it. We need to have the same kind of intentional thinking behind building these learning communities for our students who are physically separated from us. So that's the whole premise of the online student experience. And when I was at Hopkins, we set up this unit called the Student Enrollment Engagement Retention. So I called it the SEER team, which was focused on all things student experience. But essentially, if you break it down into its parts, it essentially is a little bit of admissions, a little bit of advising, a little bit of student services all wrapped into one group that is focused primarily on the student who's enrolled in an online program.

Derek Bruff (14:19):
So what does this integrated approach look like? What does curriculum design look like when it's got student experience as a thread?

Pratima Enfield (14:28):
Well, I think the linkage is a transparent partnership, in my opinion. When I launched the online programs at Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, that was a very intentional decision, right at the onset to, we didn't have a lot of staff. We slowly recruited our staff, but some of these services were essentially provided by me. But we had vendors and so on, excuse me, step in and help us along the way, but it was a partnership right at the onset. So for example, when we were thinking of a new program, and when you're thinking of launching a new program, you're also thinking about who that demographic is. You're engaging your marketing people, you're engaging your recruitment folks, because the recruitment folks are the ones who are in direct contact with these students. You're engaging your advisors to help you inform how the students would navigate the courses.

(15:32):
Is it going to be cohort based or not going to be cohort based? What's the student experience? But you have the conversation right at the onset, and as the curriculum gets built or the program gets built out, it's a natural process that they're still a part of the conversation. Once the program goes into a design phase where each of the courses are now being designed, the conversation of, okay, so let's say in this particular course we're going to have a series of group assignments. Everybody hates group assignments. How can we leverage our student support team to help during that time? So maybe the instructional designer has a conversation with the student support team. What strategies do you think we should put in place? Are there any ideas that you have? Sure, maybe we can have a peer evaluation process in there, so to retain them or their presentation has to be done this and this way, or I can come in as a student support person to provide that support when say, one or two people in the group are falling behind, but it's more of a coordinated effort.

(16:44):
Now, I will caveat that by saying imagine that at scale it would be a lot to do, right? The advantage that we had was it was a small team. It was two programs, and I was involved in all of it from start to finish. So it was a much easier implementation. But if you're thinking about a similar kind of an integrated approach to teaching and student experience, it has to be, first, you have to think about how many personnel you'll need, and there's a lot that needs to be thought through if you want to implement that at scale. But I can say that having that integration, I feel benefited not only the instructional design team, but also the year team tremendously.

Derek Bruff (17:34):
So I want to ask about faculty. There's this interesting paradox where when faculty teach online, they are often provided with more support and sometimes mandated support than when they teach on site where they have a lot more autonomy, which is good, but also are kind of left to their own devices. Because I find that sometimes part of my job in working with faculty is helping them understand what are the different units on campus that are designed to help students? And it's kind up to the individual faculty member to know, oh, if I have a student who's encountering this type of difficulty, there's a resource I can send them to. But you're doing some of that for the faculty by putting those resources together at the front end. Is that right?

Pratima Enfield (18:23):
Yeah. But also when we onboard faculty for the online program, so say a faculty is going to start designing an online course for us, and we are introducing them to their design partners, the instructional design and instructional technologists and so on, and introducing the experience to them and what is it going to look like when they design this online course. We also at that moment include the student support team in that introduction to say, this is how this team helps. But because the design process is so spread out, we're looking at four, six months before the actual courses launched that we have this onboarding conversation towards the end or halfway through the advising or the student support team comes back again with the picture and say, Hey, the courses are about to start just an FYI. This is what I'm going to be doing. I'm going to be in your course.

(19:16):
If you see me in there, this is who I am. This is what I do. I'm going to be watching the students, but if you notice any anomalies or need support, reach out to me. So there is that reach out from that representative as well. And I can see that happening to a degree in an in-person education, your traditional format. As you know, at the beginning of every semester there is a faculty onboarding, so to speak. The new and old come together and we introduce our LMSs and all the new technology that we have. And why not also introduce the support? If your student has basically gone AWOL halfway through the semester, please contact such and such person and maybe even list that person in the LMS course so that they know to ping them when the time comes. But I'm sure to a certain degree we do that. I think the difference is in the online, because we're so separated, because we're so absent in space, we are extra intentional about making sure that everyone knows who that person is or how they can be reached out to and so on.

Derek Bruff (20:31):
But also what I'm also hearing is that there's a kind of proactive piece, because I feel like it is somewhat natural for faculty if they realize there's a problem with a student who's not turning in assignments, who's not participating in the ways that they had planned to try to intervene or to get help for that student. But the example you shared was actually a very proactive approach, which was to say, we know this type of assignment, this group project is going to be challenging for some students. How can we plan ahead to make sure that the support folks are where they need to be? And I think that's pretty novel. I don't see that very often.

Pratima Enfield (21:05):
Yeah. Well, I'm happy to hear that.

Derek Bruff (21:08):
Are there other examples you can describe kind of concrete ways in which this kind of happened at Johns Hopkins?

Pratima Enfield (21:15):
Well, in terms of assignment design, where we're pulling in the student services group, projects were one such. But another project that the team extensively collaborated on was the orientation. This was not only just orientation to the program, but it was orientation to being an online student. What do you need to do to be an effective online student? Study habits and all those are the fun things. But also, and the student support team would be the one essentially fleshing that part out. How can you be effective in an online environment when you're not on campus, you don't have easy access to your faculty. You may be like 12 hours behind and on the other side of the planet. How do you navigate all of that? So they were highly involved in putting that together in a collaborative manner. The other thing, another point of participation for the online programs was, and this was a very intentional decision that was made early on, all our online programs have a residency component, and it happens once a year.

(22:27):
So students come down to DC spend about a week and they work on a project. It's tied in with their culminating capstone project, and then they come back again at the end of the program, finish up that capstone, attend graduation, and they're done. That residency component is a hundred percent collaboration between the instructional design team and the SEER team. Every single part of it, the instructional design team is the one that focuses on the curricular experience, what the faculty are teaching, what is needed instructionally. The SEER team is the one that's planning all their out of curricular experience. What presentations do we have? Alumni come in, do we have student services come in, or can we have a photo op or whatever. So they're laying that out. But having the two teams come together to have that conversation is so critical because from the instructional design team's perspective, they have insight into what student services does and vice versa, because sometimes they don't necessarily see what's going on in each other's worlds. Whereas having these different points of communication helps the team members also see the integration of curriculum design and extracurricular design to ensure that the student is successful in the program.

Derek Bruff (23:55):
Yeah. So you mentioned the kind of insight that the two teams can provide each other. Can you think of an example of a light bulb moment in either direction where it was helpful to have that other perspective that kind of changed the work that the one team did?

Pratima Enfield (24:11):
You know what? There were many, and I can't necessarily think of one, but I know there were so many times during our meetings, what would always present itself would be the timeline issue. As in if a certain activity needs to be done, does the student services team need to be intimated of that? And how many weeks prior to that should they know in case they need to step in when the time comes? So those kind of instances, really small little instances of alignment would show up the information that one team would need from the other to make sure that they're able to step in. Oh, a good example would be at the time of recruitment as well as, let's say when students are dropping the course or they're failing the course, at what point should the instructional design team know? Because the student services team knows beforehand, they're already processing it.

(25:20):
And how would the instructional design team be intimated? And then again, another example would be at the time of when we are recruiting students in, we know what part of the world they're coming from, but the instructional designers don't know that until the classes have started and they have to schedule their live sessions. So they need to find the right time and make sure that's part of their conversation with their faculty. So how do we make sure, how do we ensure that as and when these students are coming in, that we are letting our instructional design team know of these details about these students? So we had a whole lot of these missed opportunities over the years. And ultimately last year, I was like, okay, let's create a database because clearly there's information that all of us are getting that every one of us also needs.

(26:08):
So I created this worksheet called, it's a very simple Excel sheet. It's a student engagement, enrollment and retention worksheet. That's it. And what it essentially does is it tracks the students' information from the time that they inquire about the program to the time they graduate. So it's bringing in their, once they're accepted into the program, where in the world do they live? Are they employed? Where do they work? What's their contact information outside the Hopkins email? And then once they're in the program, it tracks whether or not they're passing each of the courses in a timely manner. And if they fail or if they're dismissed from the program, there's documentation attached to it so that everyone in the educational designer technology team has the pertinent access or pertinent information that they need to then make their decisions. But it's tough because we're all working with these students from these separated angles and to make sure that information is critical to all. We all need similar information, but we don't have it. So I think that worksheet worked out pretty well. I hope they're still using it that have left.

Derek Bruff (27:29):
Well, and I think about at the undergraduate level, I'm always surprised at how disconnected admissions offices can be from the faculty. The admissions office knows a lot about these students that we're teaching, but it's often its own little world, and there's not a lot of communication back and forth. This comes up most for me when faculty are complaining about the students that are being let in. And I'm like, well, we could have a conversation with admissions. My guess is they're actually doing a lot more sophisticated work over there than you think that they are.

Pratima Enfield (28:05):
Oh, yeah. And the admissions team has their own sort of a client management system where all of this information is tracked. Their GPA, their quality of essay and quality of statement of purpose, everything is in there. And I'm glad that you bring this up because for our purposes, for our online students, I was able to see all of that when I go into the admissions system and look at it. And I can predict to a certain degree how a particular student is going to perform based on that data. And at the same time, I don't want to introduce any bias to my instructional design and faculty. So it's a difficult dance. I think, for instance, if there's a student who's coming in, especially weak in writing, I know that the student is not going to be able to succeed in the program, then this student should not be accepted into the program. And I think that's what's critical in terms of making sure that the students are successful, is we have to make sure that the students who are coming in are prepared to a certain degree to be successful. They have the prerequisite knowledge, especially in an online program. You have to have top-notch communication skills. You cannot succeed if you cannot write a cogent sentence. So those are some of the basic tells, so to speak.

Derek Bruff (29:41):
And you're in a position to kind of see how the students fare in the program itself, and then can take some of that insight back to the recruitment folks to help them refine what their processes are.

Pratima Enfield (29:53):
Absolutely.

Derek Bruff (29:55):
There's a lot of conversation in higher ed now about certainly declining enrollments at the undergraduate level, and there are a lot more universities that are thinking about online education as a way to compliment what they're already doing with residential education. Because if you are dependent on tuition dollars and they're shrinking in one area, you might have to get creative in other areas. There's also a thread around institutions distinguishing themselves, not trying to be everything to everyone, but to try to be really good at meeting the needs of certain students. And I feel like that's what I'm hearing from your programs at Johns Hopkins. You have a very particular group of students. You're designing an experience that's going to really meet their needs and give them the support they need to succeed. And that's going to be tailored. It's going to be customized.

Pratima Enfield (30:48):
And to your point, I think it's a great point that you're making, Derek, that is, we need to get more focused on what we do, identify our target demographic, and create opportunities around that demographic. The needs of one demographic are not going to be the same as the other. And you're absolutely right. And I think our greatest folly sometimes is that we want to do everything and then we make a big mess of it,

Derek Bruff (31:14):
Or we want to be just like that other institution that we have in mind.

Pratima Enfield (31:17):
Yes. Oh my gosh.

Derek Bruff (31:18):
Instead of saying, let's lean into our strengths and what we can do really well and the students that we can meet.

Pratima Enfield (31:24):
Yeah, absolutely. I 100% aligned with that. And you'll end up doing a better job because then your thinking is aligned towards one target as opposed to you just throwing spaghetti on the wall. You're really focused. And of course, if you're going to be focused on a singular target, your outcome is going to be good through a few tries along the way, but you, you're going to get there.

(31:49):
Yeah, I completely agree. And when you mentioned, when you start talking about declining admission numbers, the nature of our students, it's changing. The students who are coming in, they don't think that the ultimate be all, end all is to go to college. They're thinking of other opportunities. And as leaders in higher education, we have to think about what kind of opportunities are they thinking about maybe. And we can tailor that. I mean, our expertise in education is to provide that expertise in education. So all we have to do is think about it differently, and it's an opportunity. It's an excellent opportunity that we have, and I hope we pursue it.

Derek Bruff (32:35):
How do you think that work that you did at Johns Hopkins is going to shape the work that you're doing at the U-S-N-C-C?

Pratima Enfield (32:43):
That's a very, very good question. So the work, I think the best way to characterize or describe the work that I did at Hopkins was essentially I build an offer, a program, and its entire infrastructure from soup to nuts. So there wasn't any online programs at the School of Advanced International Studies. And so I basically built those two programs with the faculty, hired all the people, set up the vendor partnerships, all of it from start to finish. And it was an excellent, excellent opportunity because I got insight into what it is to build that kind of an enterprise from soup to nuts, right? It's all the details, all the things that can work, that can go wrong or that can break, or what do we need to think about and so on and so forth. And what attracted me to the position at U-S-N-C-C was exactly that, because this unit, this institution was established in 2019, brand new, fully online, and there are so many opportunities, and it's building at scale. So what I did at a much smaller level at Hopkins, they're doing at a much grander level at the U-S-N-C-C, and this is my opportunity to bring in that lens, that holistic, all encompassing sort of a lens and my practice into that team and see where it goes. I mean, we're in the process of just currently building out a competency-based program for the U-S-N-C-C and starting something from zero again, which is very exciting.

(34:39):
Every time I do it, I'm like, I don't want to do this again. But no, that's where my happiness lies. I can't lie.

Derek Bruff (34:46):
You're a builder. You're a builder.

Pratima Enfield (34:46):
A builder, without a doubt.

Derek Bruff (34:50):
Well, thank you, Pratima. Thanks for coming on and sharing some of your experience, some of your successes, and I wish you the best of luck in the new position, figuring out how to do all of that and more at scale. So yeah, thanks for being here.

Pratima Enfield (35:01):
Thank you so much, Derek. Thank you for the opportunity.

Derek Bruff (35:06):
That was Pratima Enfield, associate Dean of Instructional Design at the United States Naval Community College, thanks to Pratima for sharing her work from Johns Hopkins. And thanks to UPCEA for connecting us.

(35:19):
I was at a conference last month hosted by Top Hat. It was a session on navigating change in higher ed during a very lively conversation. In that session, I compared the working of a university to that of an orchestra. Mind you, I've never been a part of an orchestra, so I'm basing this entirely on what I've seen in the movies. In an orchestra, you have lots of musicians who are very skilled in their instruments, who work together to perform a complicated piece of music. They know the score literally, and they know how their performances contribute to the overall piece. In higher ed, you have lots of talented faculty and staff who are very good at what they do, but sometimes those faculty and staff don't have a sense of how their work contributes to a larger mission.

(35:59):
They don't know the score and how their roles fit into it. How can we help everyone at an institution see their part in the orchestra? It's a hard question, but I like the approach that Pratima and her colleagues took beating at least a few parts of that orchestra on the same page. Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the Online and Professional Education Association. In the show notes, you'll find a link to the UPCEA website where you can find out about their research, networking opportunities and professional development offerings. This episode of Intentional Teaching was produced and edited by me, Derek Bruff. See the show notes for links to my website, the Intentional Teaching Newsletter, and my Patreon, where you can help support the show for just a few bucks a month. If you found this or any episode of Intentional Teaching useful, would you consider sharing it with a colleague? That would mean a lot. As always, thanks for listening.