Maintaining Course Quality and Integrity Across Multiple Modalities

Abstract

To effectively educate the future public health workforce, it is essential for public health faculty to engage in purposeful and thoughtful pedagogical practices in their teaching. In the post-COVID higher education environment, instructors teaching course sections offered both in-person and online concurrently must ensure that curricular continuity is maintained, while respecting modality-driven differences. Developing multiple course sections, parallel in outcomes and rigor, but bespoke in instructional approach requires both additional development time and faculty support structures. While time is always in short supply, it is troubling to note that there is a paucity of information directed toward faculty that provides guidance on how faculty engage in course design work that requires them to plan in two modalities simultaneously. In the absence of available best practices for course design in multiple modalities, this paper provides a description of a pedagogical curriculum reflection exercise created to ensure that course sections delivered across different modalities are comparable and meet course competencies, such as those of the Council on Education for Public Health, in equitable ways.