Designing scalability in required in-class introductory college courses

Abstract

We posit that design science enables the creation of in-class introductory college courses that can scale to large numbers of students, under resource constraints. We build on the centrality of human interactions in learning environments and conceptualize a college course as a socio-technical (ST) artifact. Grounded in the intervention theory, we draw meta-requirements guiding the design of college courses that leverage IT to scale, while maintaining the centrality of the professor’s role. We use the design-build-evaluate cycle to instantiate the ST artifact and demonstrate its feasibility using evaluation episodes as prescribed by the Framework for Evaluation in Design Science Research.