A Marie Kondo Approach to Course Decluttering: Case Study in Designing an Accelerated Online Course

• In Event: Instructional Strategies That Support Student Learning

Abstract

Accelerated courses offer the same learning outcomes and credit hours as their semester-length counterparts but over a shorter duration of study. At many universities, accelerated online courses are gaining traction as a solution to students’ demand for more flexible scheduling. Many educators find it challenging to convert 16-week online courses to 8-week online courses. To help think through this conversion, we were inspired by Marie Kondo’s system for decluttering and tidying living and work spaces, only keeping items that are needed and spark joy. In this presentation we will describe how we applied Marie Kondo’s decluttering advice to the design of an accelerated online course, and share students’ perceptions of the resulting accelerated online course.

Authors

• Joanna C. Dunlap, University of Colorado - Denver

• Alexis Stoddard Bjelica, University of Colorado - Denver