ABSTRACT
IN THE SUMMER OF 2013, my former dean Dr. Scott Dalrymple (now President of Columbia College in Columbia, Missouri) bequeathed me with the opportunity and challenge to design an outside-the-box online course for Excelsior College's (a not for profit online college) School of Liberal Arts. The college had made extra money available for the development of two “showcase” courses. One course went to the School of Nursing and one to Liberal Arts. I had also been awarded a $5,000 innovation grant from the college. The school decided the course would be on cyberculture and that I would be responsible for making this a featured course. Why me? I had earned a reputation for innovation and the leadership team felt I could cultivate an exciting new course. Exciting news! In general, online colleges work at scale, and courses are developed in a very standardized fashion adhering to a strict timeline. Unlike a traditional college course where the professor develops and teaches the course with full autonomy, online courses usually have instructional designers, technologists, program directors (i.e. department chairs), and subject matters experts working together on building a “master” course shell that will be taught by many different adjunct faculty who had nothing to do with the course content or design. I now had the opportunity to do something different and I wanted something totally nonstandard.
