The first fully asynchronous course to launch at the University of Puget Sound — a graduate module on multilingual learners and students with disabilities, designed and taught by the content expert.

Course architecture and module design from UPS's first fully asynchronous offering, built for working teacher candidates in the Multilingual and Special Education concentration.

CASE STUDY SUMMARY

The University of Puget Sound's MAT program needed to expand access for working teacher candidates in the Multilingual & Special Education concentration. That meant building UPS's first fully asynchronous course — with no prior template at the institution to follow.

As the content expert in multilingual learners and students with disabilities, I led both curriculum and instructional design — applying ADDIE across the course lifecycle, aligning module learning objectives with program outcomes and state teacher certification standards, and translating face-to-face graduate pedagogy into asynchronous architecture without sacrificing depth. Close collaboration with the Director of Ed Tech provided the institutional knowledge of Canvas, university policies, and the infrastructure decisions that had to be made for the first time. I also taught the course.

The course delivered UPS's first fully asynchronous offering — and a working model the program could build on. The collaboration model — a content expert paired with the Director of Ed Tech — became a reference point for the institution on how future asynchronous courses could be built.

Being both the content expert and the instructional designer is rare in higher education, and it changes the nature of the work. There is no SME translation layer — the pedagogy and the design decisions live in the same person. The Director of Ed Tech knew the institution; my job was to know the learners, the content, and how to bring them together asynchronously.

Tools: Canvas LMS · Snagit · ADDIE framework