Coordinating a global course across 20 subject matter experts

THE SITUATION

The Biology of Vector-Borne Diseases course arrived with an unusual challenge: the subject matter experts weren’t a single faculty member with a syllabus, but roughly twenty scientists from institutions around the world, each contributing lectures from their own recording setups, in their own formats, on their own timelines. There was no unified visual language, no consistent caption solution, and no off-the-shelf course structure that could hold it all together.

WHAT I DID

I designed a custom course architecture in Canvas that could present research from a distributed team of contributors as a coherent, navigable learning experience. That meant developing a visual design system flexible enough to accommodate varying media quality while still feeling intentional and professional. I built a custom caption and transcript solution to handle the volume and variety of lecture recordings — coordinating caption production across all twenty presenters rather than leaving it as an afterthought. On the registration side, I mapped out and implemented a custom decision-tree workflow to route learners correctly based on their role, institution, and access level.

WHAT CHANGED

A course that could have easily become a loosely organized video library instead became a structured, accessible, professionally presented learning environment — one that reflects the caliber of the science it contains. The registration system reduced friction for a learner population that spanned institutions and roles. The caption solution brought the course into WCAG compliance while also improving usability for all learners, not just those requiring accommodations.

course demo video

course page layouts

custom registration

REQUIREMENTS: We needed a system that would dynamically determine the price of the course based on the GDP of the country the student lives in, whether the student wants a scholarship, and whether any scholarships are still available for the region where they live. If there are scholarships, they’re given a scholarship discount code specific to that region resulting in a free course. If there are no longer scholarships available for that particular region, they’re given a different discount code which gives them a discount relative to the region they selected. Region A gets the largest discount and has the most scholarships available as they are countries with the lowest GDP. Region B, C, and D progressively get a smaller discount and less scholarship options as GDP increases.

SOLUTION: Qualtrics form with branching survey flow logic, integrated quotas, and branching workflows which dynamically delivered specific course cost and discount codes. The form directs the user to the Modern Campus Keep Learning platform where the student enters their discount code to receive the specified course rate.

Capture solution

REQUIREMENTS: Provide a solution that will collect video presentations from 20-30 instructors from around the world, with unknown technology capabilities and access. Convert those presentations into a cohesive, engaging, accessible course for delivery to students all over the world, including an accurate translation solution which converts the presentation into any language.

SOLUTION: Deployed Panopto video third-party integration on the CANVAS platform, synching the main institutional instance. Built a custom Video Capture CANVAS course on the flexible Keep Learning platform which allows users from anywhere to register and participate. Video was captured into a base course, then copied to a BluePrint course where it was edited, branded, and integrated into the BVBD course structure. Due to complex scientific language 80 presentations where sent out for Human Caption conversion. Then I used regular expressions to convert accurate closed captions into accessible transcripts and created a tutorial to show students how the Ally translation tool can be used on the presentation transcripts.

case studies