I did a keynote for CourseTune a few years back and one for Quality Matters around the same time. I really like how my thoughts came together. There is something about keynotes that pushes my to organizing my ideas in was that otherwise would not be possible. After this keynote, I kept thinking — I want to review that transcript, I want to see if there is more there. Since then, I worked with AI to extract some possible book chapters. I also developed a possible grant proposal. I feel like I am writing quite a few books right now, but what do you think?
Book Outline
Chapter Title: Rethinking Instruction: Designing for Student Success in Blended and Digital Learning Environments
Author: Dr. Tanya Joosten
I. Introduction
Claim: Higher education has historically prioritized content delivery over meaningful learning; intentional design is now essential to student success.
- Personal narrative: disengagement and failure in large lectures due to outdated pedagogy
- Recognition that “it wasn’t me, it was the pedagogy”
- Urgency for a paradigm shift post-pandemic and post-Zoom University
II. The Instructionist Model: History and Limitations
Claim: The instructionist model (lecture-based, passive, exam-driven) is outdated and ineffective for diverse learners in today’s world.
- Origin of the lecture hall and its ties to early 20th-century industrial and exclusionary models
- Instruction as information transfer: transmission models from early communication theory
- 80% of college courses still rely on this format
- Catastrophic exams and the “weeding out” culture as systemic barriers
III. The Case for Pedagogical Shift
Claim: Student-centered, active learning pedagogies are grounded in decades of research across disciplines and are more effective for all students.
- Shift from positivist to post-positivist and interpretive paradigms
- Constructivism: students learn through interaction, inquiry, and relevance
- Foundational research: Chickering & Gamson, Bonwell (1991), Pace (1947), and Nessie framework
- Supporting theories: Social Presence, Social Cognitive, Interactionism
- Real-world skills and career relevance as guiding forces for curricular design
IV. Design as the Most Powerful Predictor of Student Success
Claim: Course design—not content delivery—is the most statistically significant predictor of student outcomes.
- DETA research findings from regression models and factor analysis
- Design > Organization > Learning Support > Instructor Interaction
- Alignment of outcomes → assessments → activities (backward design)
- Clarity, structure, and scaffolded learning as key mechanisms
- Low-stakes, frequent feedback improves learning and retention
V. Equity Through Design and Modality
Claim: Equity is not possible without rethinking both pedagogy and modality—especially for racially minoritized, first-gen, and poverty-affected students.
- Myth: racially minoritized students prefer face-to-face
- Reality: 80%+ of these students prefer flexible, blended modalities (UW System data)
- Digital learning is not inherently inequitable—bad design is
- Research on OER, access, and improved outcomes for underserved groups
- The need to move beyond the “digital divide” narrative and toward tech empowerment
VI. Institutional and Programmatic Implications
Claim: Transforming instruction must go beyond individual classrooms—it requires systemic alignment across programs and institutions.
- The Blended Institution of Higher Ed model as a systems-based framework
- Programmatic consistency: how backward design, quality indicators, and active learning scale
- Faculty peer review, shared rubrics, CourseTune for design alignment
- Vision: aligning student success with institutional sustainability and equity goals
VII. Readiness: Faculty and Students
Claim: Faculty and student readiness must be addressed intentionally; both groups need support to succeed in digital environments.
- Faculty instinct ≠ evidence-based pedagogy
- Faculty development research: improved design confidence and student outcomes
- Student online learning readiness: technological literacy, course familiarity, and mindset
- Key constructs: productivity tool proficiency, prior experience, belief in modality efficacy
- Managing student expectations: syllabus language, scaffolding, onboarding strategies
VIII. Practical Tools and Future Research
Claim: Tools like the DETA Toolkit and CourseTune can operationalize equitable design and scale research-informed improvements.
- DETA Research Toolkit (v1 and v2) for course, program, and institutional evaluation
- CourseTune as a design scaffolding platform for outcomes and alignment
- Research partnership model: shared codebooks, instruments, and design data
- Bridging theory and practice through applied scholarship and national collaborations
IX. Conclusion: Designing for the Tanya of the 1990s
Claim: We must design learning environments that ensure success for students like the first-gen, poverty-affected Tanya of the 1990s.
- Humanizing digital learning: care, flexibility, and authenticity
- From survival to thriving: how inclusive design unlocks educational mobility
- Final call to action: design with purpose, equity, and evidence
- “Quality starts now”: shift begins today, not after the fact
It was in my first response under “2. Keynote Summary,” but it got buried once we moved into the chapter outline. Here it is again, slightly strengthened to better capture the actual arc and claims of the keynote:
Summary of the CourseTune Camp 2022 Keynote
In this keynote, Tanya Joosten argues that improving student success requires higher education to become far more intentional about pedagogy, course design, modality, student preparation, and institutional support. Rather than continuing to organize teaching around inherited practices such as lectures, content transmission, high-stakes exams, and assumptions about face-to-face instruction, educators should draw on decades of research about how students learn and deliberately design environments that support learning, engagement, equity, and success.
A central argument of the keynote is that modality itself is not the intervention. Comparing face-to-face, blended, and online courses tells us relatively little unless researchers and practitioners examine what is actually happening within those environments. Poor pedagogy remains poor pedagogy regardless of whether it occurs in a classroom or online. Instead of continuing mode-comparison research, Joosten argues for examining the specific instructional practices, interactions, design characteristics, learner supports, and student characteristics that explain variation in outcomes.
The keynote traces a shift from an instructionist model of education, in which faculty transmit information to relatively passive learners, toward student-centered, active, and constructivist approaches. Drawing on research in learning science, communication, student engagement, and distance education, Joosten argues that students learn through meaningful interaction with instructors, peers, content, activities, problems, and authentic contexts. Learning environments should therefore be designed around what students need to know and be able to do rather than around the amount of content an instructor intends to cover.
Design is presented as a particularly important mechanism for student success. Findings from DETA research suggest that course design, organization, and learning support are strongly associated with student outcomes, with clarity emerging as a central underlying dimension. Effective courses make learning objectives explicit, align assessments and activities with those objectives, scaffold learning over time, provide frequent opportunities for feedback, and use authentic forms of assessment. Content remains important, but it should follow from decisions about intended learning rather than drive the course itself.
The keynote also challenges the assumption that returning students to traditional face-to-face instruction necessarily improves learning. Research accumulated over decades indicates that online and blended learning can produce outcomes comparable to face-to-face instruction. Joosten therefore argues that educators should move beyond asking which modality is “best” and instead determine which combinations of modality, pedagogy, design, interaction, and support work, for whom, and under what conditions.
Flexibility in modality is also framed as an equity issue. Survey findings presented in the keynote indicate that many students, particularly racially minoritized students, did not simply want a return to exclusively on-campus learning after the pandemic. Digital and blended environments can increase access and flexibility, but equitable outcomes depend upon intentional design and adequate support. Technology should not automatically be treated as either an equity solution or an equity problem. Its effects depend on how it is implemented, what students are expected to do with it, and whether they have the resources and competencies necessary to participate successfully.
This leads to another important argument: student readiness should not be treated as an inherent student deficit. Students arrive with different levels of technological experience, knowledge of academic practices, familiarity with online learning, access to technology, and expectations about what learning should look like. Social media familiarity, for example, does not necessarily translate into competence with productivity tools or asynchronous academic technologies. Institutions and instructors therefore have a responsibility to prepare students for the learning environments they are being asked to navigate.
The same principle applies to faculty. Effective teaching should not depend solely on instinct, disciplinary expertise, or replication of how faculty themselves were taught. Faculty development, instructional design support, peer review, incentives, and opportunities to learn evidence-based pedagogies are necessary components of educational quality. Joosten emphasizes that quality should be designed into courses and programs from the beginning rather than evaluated only after instruction has occurred.
The keynote ultimately expands this argument beyond individual courses. If research identifies practices that improve student learning at the course level, institutions should consider how those practices can be supported and scaled across programs and organizational systems. Student-centeredness should therefore become not only a pedagogical principle but also an institutional design principle. Programs and institutions should ask students what they need, understand how different groups experience learning environments, design flexible pathways, and organize resources around student success.
The keynote concludes with five practical recommendations:
- Use more active, student-centered, constructivist pedagogies.
- Be open to emerging and flexible course modalities rather than privileging face-to-face instruction by default.
- Prioritize intentional course design, alignment, organization, and learning support.
- Prepare students for the technologies, expectations, and learning approaches they will encounter.
- Prepare and support instructors through faculty development and evidence-based instructional improvement.
The larger message is that educational improvement requires moving from habit to intentionality, from mode comparison to explanatory research, from content delivery to learning design, and from designing for the average student to designing systems in which a wider range of students can succeed.